Forced Selection
by WriterGirl0812
Summary: A year and half after "What We Become" ended, The Expendables find themselves forced into their deadliest battle yet for it's not just their lives on the line. It's a race against the clock to figure out and stop the deadly plan of a deranged scientist out to prove a point no matter the cost. Things become even more complicated when one of their own is forced to work against them.
1. Chapter 1: Black Tie and Gun Affair

Lissa Hollis lets out a small sigh as she sits back into the plush chair while a makeup artist applies a pale silver eye shadow to her eye lids.

"I'm surprised this place hasn't been featured in a movie." The makeup artist, a petite girl with her blonde hair pulled back into a bun, says, "I mean it really is a scene straight from a fairytale wedding."

A smile can't help but form on Lissa's lips, "It really is huh?" She lets her arms slide down from the chairs arms rests to the silky white dress she's wearing. The venue, The Grand Franklin Inn, was an old hotel that fell to ruins as it aged. A few years ago it was bought by a wealthy man who returned the hotel to its former glory. Not an expense was spared when it came to restoring the hardwood floor in the large ballroom or the marble on the stairs leading to the second floor. At least that's what the wedding planner told Lissa and Billy when she brought them to there. It only took minutes for them to both be won over by the beauty of the hotel which included the ballroom which had walls and a ceiling like a green house.

The makeup artist sets her brush and eye shadow palette down, steps back and looks Lissa over, "You look gorgeous." She tells Lissa and steps out of the way so Lissa can look into the vanity mirror in front of her. Lissa smiles at her reflection. Her still dyed black hair comes just below her shoulders now. The hairstylist pulled pieces back to keep it out of her face and secured it with bobby pins then curled the occasional piece here and there for texture. It was simple and how she liked it. Her normally pale skin has a hint of tan to it after a job in Mexico the week before. The makeup is simple like her hair, just enough to be noticeable. "I'll come back before pictures to do touch ups." The makeup artist tells Lissa then walks out of the bridal suite.

Lissa looks around the empty room, enjoying being left alone for the first time she woke up this morning. Lacy and Maggie were serving as her bridesmaids, since the majority of the people Lissa's close to are men. She was going to invite Michelle, an FBI agent she was close with to join the bridal party but decided against it. If Michelle overheard even half the things The Expendables do, she'd be obligated to arrest them all. Which would then lead to arrests of nearly all the wedding guests before Lissa and Billy would get a chance to say "I do".

She gets up from the oversized chair, careful not to snag her dress. It's a soft white gown that just touches the floor, nothing so elaborate Lissa would need help getting around. It flows from her waist down while being a bit more form fitting at the top to support it being strapless. The dress was surprisingly found by Lee while he was in England on a solo job. Lissa had spent hours upon hours trying on dresses with Lacy trying on dresses with no luck. Then one day Lee walks into hers and Billy's house and tosses a garment bag at her. To her surprised look he told her that now she had the perfect dress so he could have Lacy back instead of spending hours dress shopping with her. The dress was in fact perfect, not only what Lissa wanted but in size. Lee wouldn't share where the dress came from and Lissa could only hope he didn't hold some dress designer at knife point for it. Lissa crosses the room to the large bay window which overlooks the backyard.

Out in the yard is Billy playing with their huskies Remy and Colt out in the large yard. Both dogs are wearing black tuxedo vests, something she and Billy joked about one night then decided they wanted it come the morning. Wearing the vests was nothing new to the dogs who regularly ran around the yard in bullet proof vests. Billy wanted to be able to bring one of the dogs with them on missions so he could have someone watch his back while he was focused on his sniper rifle. Once the pups were old enough, Billy and Lissa started training them for that purpose. Though when training ended the two of them were just normal dogs happy to play chase and take up half of Billy and Lissa's king size bed.

Lissa looks around the room grabbing her cellphone off a nearby table and a fleece blanket from the back of the couch. She wraps the blanket around her like a towel, blocking the view of her dress; it is bad luck for the groom to see the dress before the wedding after all. "Your 11 o'clock." She texts Billy then watches him toss a ball for Remy and Colt before reading her message.

Billy's eyes meet hers from across the yard and the smiles giving him a wave. He waves back, making a goofy face at her. She's about to make one back to him when she sees a look of panic form on his face. He takes off in a dead run in her direction yelling the same thing over and over again. It takes Lissa second to process it. "Behind you!"

Lissa's mid spin when a guy in a suit and a ski mask grabs ahold of her. With her feet off the ground he starts out of the room. She shifts her weight to his left side, putting more pressure on his left knee, then give it one good kick with the white ballet style flats she's wearing. She's glad she didn't let Lacey talk her into heels now. The guy releases his grip on her, giving Lissa a window to punch him in the jaw. "Somebody!" She screams for help.

Another guy in a ski mask appears in the doorway blocking her way out of the bridal suite. Lissa finds herself backing up to the bay window, trying to get out of their reach. "A little help in here!" Lissa shouts again. While the inn is big, someone has to be lingering around that can help. She casts a glance over her shoulder and out the bay window to find Billy fighting off multiple ski masked men as well.

Her attention is pulled from Billy to the men in the bridal suite who are making hand gestures. They then both make a run for her. Lissa side steps out of one of the men's way but the other makes contact with her. The force sends them both stumbling backwards to the bay window. Lissa manages to shift so his back goes through the window, shattering it as they both fall to the ground.


	2. Chapter 2: Proof Of Life

**Authors Note: I set out for this sequel to not involve kidnapping since it happened twice to Lissa in the first part, but Billy and Lissa being kidnapped was the only way I could get to the main plot I wanted. So hang in there, in a few chapters we'll get to the real "meat" of the story! Also, a shoutout to Lupin fan1 for their very kind words.**

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Lissa punches the man a few times in the face and only stops when she's certain he's unconscious. "Colt!" She shouts and the dogs come running. Lissa reaches down quickly into Colt's vest pulling out a small handgun. She fires at the remaining ski masked man in the room, hitting him in the chest. "Colt, get Barney. Go." Lissa orders and the dog takes off. She turns her attention to Billy who is being dragged towards a catering van. He's managing to get blows in on the men dragging him and Remy is growling at a couple others keeping them separated from the group.

She starts running in the yard, wanting to close some of the distance between her and the men so she can get another shot. The men are getting Billy closer and closer to the van so she stops running and fires. By the time her clip is empty she's only nicked two of the men. Nothing good enough to slow them down.

The sounds of a car are heard and Lissa turns to see another catering van pulling up behind her. She's hopeful for a second that it's Barney, but more ski masked men come out of it. She throws the empty handgun at one of the men and starts fighting the other hand to hand.

Lissa jerks her head up from the battle when she hears Colt barking and the sound of voices. Barney and Caesar are climbing out of the busted window to the bridal suite with Colt in front of them. Both men open fire as they take off running towards them. She lets out a small sigh of relief, everything will be okay now, they'll make it out of this. But the relief is gone in three seconds.

In the first second she sees one of the ski masked men pull a gun and shoot Remy in the chest. In the next she feels a sharp pain in the back of her neck. In the third she sees Billy dragged into van and just as the doors shut he screams her name. Her legs go weak and she falls forward. Barney's screaming her name now, but she can't reply. Her whole body is seizing up and her eyes grow heavy, some sort of paralytic mixed with a sedative must have been injected into her neck. When she hits the ground face first all she can hear is gun shots, Barney yelling, Colt barking and Remy whimpering.

Lissa comes to an unknown amount of time later with a start. There are no sounds from dogs, no gun shots and no one yelling her name, it's dead silent in the room.

A dark blonde haired man with a buzz cut comes into her line of vision, he grabs a hold of her hair jerking her head up to look at him. "Awake." He says noticing her eyes open and then drops his grip and heads for the only door in the room.

With the few seconds alone, Lissa sizes the room up looking for not only a way out but also weapons. There's the couch she's lying on and the chair the blonde haired man had been sitting in. Other than that the small room is vacant of all other furniture. Besides the only door there is a window, which she rushes over to. It doesn't open and the glass is thick, too think for her to smash on her own and even with the chair. The window does lead out to a fire escape. With no way to smash the window she realizes the door is her only chance at getting out of here.

The door opens and the blonde haired man returns with a bottle of water and plastic wrapped sandwich. "Eat." He tells her gesturing the two items out to her.

"Where is Billy?" Lissa asks him, "What do you want?"

"Eat." The man repeats again. He reminds her slightly of Trench, the fellow mercenary for hire that The Expendables occasionally worked with. He pushes her backwards onto the couch and drops the water bottle and sandwich beside her.

Lissa grabs ahold of his wrist squeezing tight, "Let me make something clear to you. You've made a very big mistake taking me. Let me go and your chances of ending up six feet under go from 100% to 90%." She tells him.

The man yanks his arm free from her grip with ease and back hands her with it. "Shut up." He tells her before retreating back to his chair by the door.

Lissa puts a hand to her cheek, tasting blood in her mouth from where her teeth dug into the inside of her cheek from the impact. "The percentage of you being alive when you're six feet under just went way up." She tells him. She inspects the water bottle, looking for signs it's been tampered with. Normally she wouldn't risk eating or drinking anything from her captors but she's thirsty and her stomach is rumbling. The food will help clear the lingering fog in her mind from the drugs. The bottle is still sealed and when she squeezes it there's no slow leak of water from where it could have been punctured by a syringe. With the water safe she cracks it open and greedily drinks it down.

When she finishes eating and kills the water bottle the man takes away the empty bottle and wrapper. Lissa can't help but laugh at the thought of making a weapon out of the two items, though if Gunnar was here, he probably would have. Hours tick by slowly and the only sense of time she has is the position of the sun outside the window. It's quiet in the building other than the talking of the man in the room and the man outside the room occasionally. She has a feeling Billy isn't here, if he was there would be a lot more noise. He'd be telling her he's here. Boredom takes over and she takes to rotating her engagement ring around and around her finger. She finds herself counting the rotations to better grasp the time she's spent in this room.

Lissa's trying to figure out why they came for her and Billy. With the wedding at a high end Inn, it is believable it's a kidnap for ransom. Though the team sent to take her and Billy was much too big for normal people. They sent enough muscle to subdue two elite fighters. So she strikes a normal kidnap for ransom off the list. It could be an enemy of The Expendables, maybe even Barney directly, looking to prove a point. Though Barney doesn't scare easy and taking her just ensures hell would be unleashed on the person responsible. If they wanted her to hack something, taking Billy makes sense. Sedov and his right hand man Garrett did the same thing a year and a half ago. They tortured Billy to make Lissa corporate. Though they haven't approached her with a computer yet, which is a stupid move every minute matters in a kidnapping. This abduction isn't making much sense to her.

The door to the room is suddenly pushed open. For a second she hopes it's The Expendables here to save her, but those hopes are diminished when she sees an unfamiliar man standing in the doorway with the cell phone in hand. This man seems to hold more authority over the man in the room because he quickly scrambles to his feet. If Lissa has to guess he's the boss of the team.

"I take it you're in charge." Lissa tells him as she stands up, "Why don't you tell me your master plan, which will fail by the way, since you're going to end up dead."

"Shut up." The new man says. He's clearly a man of very few words much like the blonde buzz cut man in the room. "X, please." He says to the blonde buzz cut man.

X, the nickname given to the blonde man, approaches Lissa and forces her back onto the couch. He goes behind it and puts both of his large hands on her shoulders, forcing her to remain seated.

The man in charge dials a number on the phone. "Proof of life." He says then walks over to Lissa holding the phone to her ear. "Say hello." He demands.


	3. Chapter 3: In Code

**Authors Note: Once again thank you all for your kind words, including Whitelion69 who has been a loyal reader and reviewer.**

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The phrase proof of life causes chills to run down her spine. "Hello?" Lissa asks once when the phone is to her ear. If this is somehow some screwed up kidnap for ransom, it'll be Barney on the phone or maybe even another one of the team.

"Lissa? Lissa!" To her surprise the person on the other line is Billy, not Barney. Any theories she had over their kidnapping are no good now. Why would they be giving Billy proof of life? "Are you okay? Tell me?" There's desperation in his tone.

Lissa feels tears well up in her eyes but she blinks them away. She can't look weak in front of these two men. "I'm fine." She answers. Training from various sessions with The Expendables all come back to her. After she was kidnapped by Garrett from Barney's farmhouse, she had Lee train her in everything she would want to know about being kidnapped. Including passing on messages, it's a lesson he also did with Billy. "Nothing an aspirin or three couldn't fix. You know the strong kind." She tells him, noting the number of men currently holding her down and their appearance. While she's only seen X, the man outside the door and the man in charge, she's certain there aren't any others. If there were, X and the man outside the door would be rotated out. Instead it's just them, meaning there's no relief shift. Bad for them, good for her.

"Good. You can hang in there." Billy tells her, "Listen, you need to do everything they tell you to do. You cooperate. They tell you to jump you start jumping. Don't pause to ask how high just jump. You got it?" He's telling her to run at the first chance she gets. His tone is like he's giving orders to a solider. Very little emotion, just a flat and even voice. It's meant to help keep her calm, help her see the objective of escaping. It's the tone Barney first used with her when he rescued her from Sedov's warehouse.

Lissa pauses for a moment needing to think. She needs to find a way to tell him running will be difficult to do, "That'll be a little hard. My shoes aren't really meant for jumping and the room I'm in isn't a gym." She hopes it will do. She's trying to pass onto him that she has no chance at a weapon and there's only one way for her out of here – through the guarded door.

"You are smart, you'll figure something out." Billy tells her. The more authoritative tone of voice is gone when he speaks again. "They came for me, not you. They are going to use to you to make me cooperate. Fight Lissa, fight!" He's shouting now but his voice becomes a bit distant like someone is pulling the phone away. "Lissa I love you!" The last few words are barely audible, but she manages to make them out.

"Billy!" Lissa screams into the phone, she wants him to hear her no matter what, "I love you too. You fight." After a howl of pain comes from Billy the line disconnects. The sound instantly brings tears to her eyes and she lets out a loud sob. Even when Garrett had her nailed down to a desk she didn't feel this helpless. She hates this feeling, she hates knowing somewhere they have Billy in a situation much like hers. Little chance at escape and little hope of being found.

"I highly suggest you do as we say, or we will make you." The man in charge says then leaves the room, stuffing the phone into his pocket. X releases his grip on her shoulders and goes back to his chair.

"What the hell do you want with us?" Lissa shouts at him, but her question is only met with silence. She finds herself sinking back onto the couch replaying the conversation with Billy over and over again. They wanted him, not her. Billy doesn't have any family, besides her, so that means there is no way in hell this is a kidnap for ransom. They took Billy for a specific purpose and took her to so she could be used to make him cooperate. Besides being a strong fighter and a bit of a leader, Billy has one main skill, he's a sniper. They plan to use him to assassinate someone and if he doesn't, they'll threaten her life and force him to do it.

It grows dark outside the window as Lissa lies on the couch, twisting her engagement ring around and around on her finger. She keeps trying to think up escape plans but finds no one of them will work. Even if she could take X out, he's unarmed. She'll have to take the man outside the door out too and then get ahold of his weapon. She could handle one man on her own with hand to hand, but two is a major risk, especially if X calls for backup from the man outside the door.

There's a knock on the door and X opens it up. The man outside the door hands off two bags of fast food and two drinks. It gives Lissa a better sense of time, it must be somewhere around dinner time now. A burst of sadness flares up in her when she realizes right now she should be eating a roasted chicken dinner with julienne vegetables and mashed potatoes at her wedding reception. She should be laughing at Billy's side and smiling at all the guests. Not trapped in a room with a man named X eating burgers. She can't help but wonder what is happening to all the food at her wedding.

X looks over the contents of the bags, drops one on his seat and then drops the other on the couch next to her. He holds one of the paper cups out to her, when she takes it she becomes aware that the diamond in her ring is facing the wrong way. She feels a small amount of soda drip into her hand after the diamond punctures the cup. A smile forms on her face as she sits back on the couch, using a finger to plug the small hole. She knows how she's getting out of here now.


	4. Chapter 4: X Marks The Spot

Lissa times it to be about an hour after they are done eating. That's when she starts letting out small groans of discomfort and clutching her stomach. "How can your stomach not be killing you from all that grease?" She asks X knowing she won't get an answer. The stomach ache is all an act to get him to leave the room, allowing her to carry out the next step in her plan. "I'm going to be frank here, pal, I need some Pepto for my stomach or things are going to get real ugly in here. And well small room, no windows, I doubt you want to be trapped in here with that."

X lets out a groan of frustration then gets up from his chair, knocking on the door. The man outside the door opens it and looks in. "I have to go to the drugstore down the street. She's sick." X tells him. Lissa is slightly impressed that X is capable of speaking more than one word at a time. The man outside the door looks at her, questioning the whole thing.

"Just because I can field strip a gun like a guy doesn't mean I can eat like one." Lissa tells him with a shrug.

"Go. I'll keep watch." The man outside the door tells X and slams the door to Lissa's room shut.

Once alone Lissa doesn't waste any time. She crosses the room to the window, pulling her ring off. She scratches a large x onto the glass then begins to trace over it over and over and over again. She's glad now that Billy got her a diamond a little bigger than she wanted. It's coming in handy now as her means for escape. The diamond is stronger than the glass, allowing her to scratch her way to freedom.

She knows she doesn't have long till X returns so she drags the ring across the glass as fast as she can. Her finger tips go raw quick and soon begin to bleed. Lissa doesn't pay much mind to it; she can't afford to slow down now. She stops scratching a couple of minutes later and finds that they are as deep as they are going to get. Glancing out the window through an unobstructed part, she sizes up the darkened fire escape, it's narrow. She's going to need to move quickly and the long wedding gown will only slow her down.

Lissa lets out a sad sigh and pulls at the fabric near her knees. She forces the diamond of her ring into it and pulls. Soon she has an uneven tear all the way around making the dress somewhere around knee length. She moves to push the couch against the door as quietly as she can. It won't stop the man outside the door from getting in, but it will slow him down. Once the door to jammed, she returns to the puddle of torn dress fabric on the floor. She rips it into pieces and ties it around her hands to protect them from what's to come. Lissa grabs a hold of the wooden chair, glad it's a bit heavier than she thought. She stands a few paces away from the window then charges at it with the chair out in front of her. The legs collide with the scratched in X first and when the snap she keeps on pushing with the bottom of the chair. The glass begins to break and she steps back once again before charging at the window. This time she's successful and the window breaks away. The sound of the shattering glass gets the attention of the man outside the door and he tries to make his way in.

With him slowed down by the couch Lissa uses the remains of the broken chair to give her a boost out the window and onto the fire escape. She turns around as she begins to climb down the ladder and can't help but grin at the man outside the door whose trying to fight his way in. He fires off a shot from his hand gun, which catches her in her upper arm. She's too hyped up on adrenaline to feel it and just keeps going down the fire escape.

Once her feet hit solid ground she starts running as fast as she can. She needs to put as much distance between her and those men as possible. She pulls some of the torn wedding dress fabric from her hands and ties a make shift bandage on the bullet graze on her upper right arm as she runs. She can only guess she's in the bad part of town in a good size town. Many of the buildings are boarded up with faded closed signs in the windows. There is almost no one out and about, other than the occasional car that drives a bit too fast to get out of this neighborhood.

Lissa's salvation comes about a mile away when she spots a few lit up buildings up ahead. One of them is a convenience store with an outside ATM nearby. Cash is just the thing she needs. Sticking to the shadows she approaches the ATM and goes straight for the side maintenance panel. It takes some prying but she manages to bust it open. Inside is a small computer control panel used to update the machine or process a new deposit of cash. Derek showed her years ago, when she was still with the Hollis family, how to hack the ATM machines. They'd hack the machines just to prove they could, the money was a bonus. One time they used the money to buy really good seats for the Lion King musical in downtown Boston and a dinner at a fancy restaurant after. The rest of the money Derek gave to an animal shelter.

The thought of animals makes her think of Remy and how she last saw him whimpering on the ground after being shot. "They'll pay." She tells herself out loud. Like riding a bike the codes needed for hacking the ATM come back to her. The trick with robbing ATM's is to trick it there's a cash change over and for it to spit out all the money. Trying to steal the money from the inside causes dye packs to go off and the robber being stained purple all over. With the proper codes entered the machine begins to spit out it is entire contents, exactly sixteen hundred dollars. It's not as much as she was hoping for, but it's enough to get her by for now.


	5. Chapter 5: Survival Lessons From Barney

**Authors Note: My apologies for the delay in updating. I'm currently pretty sick and spent most of yesterday on the couch which has put me behind in writing.**

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Lissa puts the panel back on the ATM and breaks the cash up into smaller piles of bills before stuffing some into her flats and some into the top of her dress, just out of sight. She knows the men who took her will be looking for her, so she can't risk going into the convenience store. It'll be one of the first places they look when they start to figure out how far she could have gotten on foot.

Instead she starts running again, keeping to alley ways and back roads, constantly looking over her shoulders for signs of the kidnappers. Her legs ache and her gunshot wound is sore, but she can't slow down. Barney, like Lee, also gave her a mini lesson on what to do if she was taken again. His lesson comes right back to her and it's as if he's running beside her telling her what to do.

"Survive, that's the first thing. When you escape, run and don't' stop. They will be planning on you slowing down if you're on foot and will look for easy places to go for help. So you keep going till your feet are bleeding. Then you look for a place to get a change of clothes, a car, a phone and a weapon. Once you have them you call for help and then you keep on running. You do whatever is necessary for you to survive." Barney's voice rings through her mind.

She follows the orders and keeps going till she spots a warehouse up ahead. It's not the warehouse that catches her attention but the fire in a metal trashcan that's still visible in the early morning hours. Music is playing and she can hear laughter. Judging by how run down this area is, it has to be teenagers out partying. It's the perfect way to get everything she needs including possibly getting her hands on a weapon.

Lissa moves silently, sticking to the remaining shadows around the building. Standing around the trash can fire is two teenage girls and three late teenage guys. They are handing a bottle of vodka back and forth, laughing while one tells a story.

"Hey, yah'll, be right back. Gotta take a leak." One of the boys says and starts walking towards Lissa.

"_Perfect."_ She can't help but think. When he approaches, she doesn't waste a second of time. One hand snakes around his mouth from behind him and the other wraps firmly around the base of his neck. "Scream or try to fight me and I swear to god I will break your neck." Lissa whispers firmly in his ear. "Now walk back to your friends." She shoves a knee into the back of one of his thighs and forces him to start walking back to the group. She keeps him positioned in front of her, as a human shield.

"Brady, you back so soon?" One of the girls asks and then lets out a scream when she spots Lissa behind the boy, Brady.

"What's your deal bitch?" One of the other boys shouts and pulls a gun from the waistband of his baggy jeans. He aims it in her direction, but doesn't' have much of a chance of not hitting his friend.

Lissa can't help but laugh when she notices he didn't click the safety off. Maybe this part of town isn't so bad if the thugs don't know how to shoot someone. "Listen, I don't want to hurt any of you but I will if I have to. Let me make it very clear, I am a highly skilled and I can snap your friend Brady here's neck. But I don't want to have to do that. Instead what I need is for you to lower that gun and kick it over to me. Then I'm going to need your keys and all of your cell phones."

"Dude shoot her!" The third guy shouts to the one holding the gun.

Lissa jams two fingers into a nerve bundle in Brady's neck and his screams of pain can be heard even with one of her hands over his mouth. "If you don't listen to me you're going to be rapping at your friend's funeral and you'll know it's your fault. Kids, I am in no mood to fuck around. I'm supposed to be married right now. But instead my fiancée and I were kidnapped, which has put me in a very bad mood. Do as I say or I will kill your friend and all of you." Lissa demands. Barney's words are replaying through her head again. Do whatever is necessary to survive. There's a change in her tone when she speaks to them. The kind Lissa Hollis isn't there, instead it's the more hardened Lissa Hollis whose an Expendable. There's no room for emotions, only the drive to live.

The tone must frighten them because one of the girls tells them to listen. She tosses an iPhone in a bright pink case in Lissa's direction. "Take it."

The other follow suit, with the one holding the gun last. He tosses the gun followed by a beat up flip phone.

"Good, car keys." Lissa demands and the third boy tosses those over too. Her gaze moves to the second girl who had been too quiet this whole time. She hasn't shed a tear unlike Pink iPhone girl. Then Lissa sees it, the budge in the girls jacket pocket. "What's your plan sweetheart? The second I let Brady go open fire? I dodge bullets for a living. Toss it now." She demands and presses on the nerve bundle in Brady's neck once again to prove her point.

A small silver handgun joins the pile near Lissa's feet and the girl shoots her a sour look. With a kick, Lissa forces Brady down on his knees. She removes the hand from Brady's mouth grabs one of the cell phones, while still using Brady as a human shield. "Now, listen very carefully. If men come here looking for me, you tell them nothing." Lissa says and reaches up snapping a picture of the group on the cell phone. "I'm sending this picture to the man I work for. A very ruthless man who knows how to keep people alive while he painfully torchers them for hours. This man is also my father and let me tell you he will not take kindly to me being taken or killed. So if these men come you say nothing. Do you understand?"

"Yes." The boy who had the gun answers.

"Good." Lissa reaches into the top of her dress pulling out a couple hundred dollars and shoving the money into one of Brady's hands. "Here's a couple hundred for your trouble." She says and then pushes Brady forward. She pulls the boys gun up, aiming it on the group after clicking off the safety. Lissa grabs the last few cell phones, the car keys and the other gun before climbing into the nearby parked beat four door. She doesn't take the gun off them till she's reversed the car far enough away. She drops the gun on her lap as soon as the car hits the road and she doesn't look back.


	6. Chapter 6: Fieldsborrow, Tennessee

Out on the road and in the locked car with weapons, Lissa feels much better. It's the first time since she was taken that she has a sense of security. Still she stays alert looking for any signs of her kidnappers on the road. She spots a black sweatshirt on the passenger seat, pulling it on at a red light. The smell of cigarette smoke makes her eyes water for the first few minutes, she could barely stand the smell of Barney's cigars. The sweatshirt is a necessary evil to help avoid detection and she pulls the hood up over her head blocking out most of her face. She figures in this part of town it's a normal thing.

Lissa grabs a hold of one of the cell phones and contemplates calling Barney's cell phone. She decides against it figuring the kidnappers are monitoring his calls for sure and possibly the rest of the team. Instead she dials the emergency burner phone Barney kept handy. Somehow Tool managed to snag a number which was a combination of Lissa and Barney's birthdays, making it an easy number to remember.

"Hello?" Barney's voice comes through the other line after a couple of rings. The normal mellow tone is gone and replaced with one clearly laced with stress and anger. After everything she's been through, hearing Barney's voice makes her freeze up. She thinks of the panicked look on his face as he fired round after round at the men who took her and Billy. The way all color seemed to drain from his face as she hit the ground paralyzed. "Hello? Whose there!"

"Dad, it's me." Lissa finally says, realizing she's taken much too long to answer, "I got away, but they still have Billy. They kept us separate."

"Lissa? Lissa!" Barney shouts and she can hear voices in the background, "Where are you?"

"I think Tennessee. It's a big town, more city like. Enough that there's a very bad side of town and a good one." Lissa tells him. The exhaustion and the stress clouded her mind and she realizes she made the stupid mistake of calling before she had a location. Though with Maggie there, she's sure the call is being tracked. "Hold on." She tells him and reaches onto the passenger seat grabbing one of the other phones. She opens up the GPS app and finds her current location, "I'm in downtown Fieldsborrow, Tennessee. " She answers.

"Fieldsborrow, Tennessee." Barney shouts, pulling the phone away from his ear. Lissa can hear people moving around now. "Lissa, hang on. Just keep driving." He tells her. She hears Barney let out an angry yell and all goes quiet on the other end of the phone. This causes the fear and anxiety she had been keeping a hold on to burst through her control. "Dad? Dad?" She shouts into the phone feeling tears well up in her eyes. Could the men who have taken her gone after the rest of The Expendables? Seems like a stupid thing to do, a suicide mission really. She yanks the phone away from her ear, checking to see the signal strength, but she has full service.

"Lissa." Lee's voice finally comes through on the other end.

"Lee! What the hell is going on?" Lissa demands.

"For us to get to you it's going to take a few hours at best. There's a storm rolling through and a big metal plane in a thunderstorm just isn't good news. So we're going to a backup plan." Lee tells her. Now Lissa knows why Barney let out the yell, it was one of frustration. She knows he hates that they can't get to her. "Lee, I need you to listen to me first because this is important." Lissa begins, "They still have Billy. They came for him specifically. I was only taken as a way to make him cooperate. We both know what Billy does; they are going to make him kill someone." She shares.

"That changes things." Lee tells her, "I looked up where you are, you're close to the Memphis office of the FBI. Honestly at this point it's your best bet to go there. Lots of feds, lots of guns. It's second best to the protection we could offer."

"Agreed." Lissa says and grabs the spare phone again, typing in the Memphis FBI office into the GPS. The robotic sounding woman's voice comes to life giving directions, "I have a GPS going." She tells him.

"Good, now drive and don't stop." Lee tells her, "And I need you to tell me about the men who took you. We'll start working on finding them."

"I woke up in a room with a man guarded the door, they called him X. There was a man outside the door and a man I took to be the leader. The room only had one window and door. It was a three story building with a fire escape in a bad part of town. They gave me food and water, but wouldn't talk to me. The leader came in and put Billy on the phone." Lissa answers, trying to recall every little detail she could think of, "He told me they took him and I was taken to make him cooperate. He told me, in code, to run. I took the first chance I got and haven't stopped."

She can hear Lee typing something into a computer, "That's good Lissa, it's helpful. Billy wasn't in the building with you?"

"I never heard him or saw any other guards. They were holding me somewhere separate."

"Alright, Lissa. Good, get to the feds and we'll work on getting to you and finding Billy." Lee tells her, "You call if anything happens."

Just within a few miles of the Memphis Federal Bureau of Investigation building, Lissa runs into trouble. A black SUV with windows tinted so dark she can't see inside appears behind her. It rapidly gains speed before colliding with her bumper. The force sends Lissa forward a bit, her seatbelt spotting most of it. She hits the redial button on the cell phone she called Barney on and leaves it on speaker in her lap.

"Lissa?" Barney's voice comes through.

"Black SUV, tinted windows. Serious case of road rage. Help me out here." Lissa shouts.

That's all it takes for Barney to snap into action. "Avoid being hit. Do you have weapons?" Barney asks.

Lissa eyes the guns on the passenger seat, finding a pistol. She likes shooting with them the best over all the other handguns she's tried out, "Pistol." She answers.

"Good. Is the windshield tinted?"

"Yes."

"Good, that means the glass is weak, shoot it." Barney orders.

Lissa rolls her window down and just as the SVU approaches to hit her again she swings a hand out and opens fire. Shots hit the hood of the car and the side view mirror before leaving spider webbed cracks in the windshield. One shot much have hit the driver because the SVU swerves into the other lane and she fires again. This time the SVU is jerked in another direction and then stops. "I think they are down." Lissa says to Barney, tossing the now empty pistol into the back of the car.

"How close to the suits?" Barney asks. For him CIA are spooks and FBI are suits.

"Close." Lissa says, eyeing the GPS. It says her destination is approaching. She looks ahead, spotting the American flag waving in the breeze. "I can see it."

"Listen to me carefully. Drive straight there. Do not stop. Go fast and hit anything and anyone in your way, do you understand me?" Barney asks.

"On it." Lissa says. There's no way she's stopping to explain to a guard why she's in a stolen car, with stolen guns in a badly damaged wedding dress. It'll take too long and it risks the SUV catching up to her.

It takes crashing through two check point barricades and ducking to avoid gun fire from three guards, but Lissa spots the car right in front of the steps to the main entrance. "I'm here." Lissa tells Barney as she remains ducked in the car.

"Good, tell them who you are and stay low. I'm calling Church now." Barney says and the call disconnects.

"I'm Agent Alyssa Hollis, retired." Lissa shouts as loud as she can, glad that the driver's side window and most of the windshield were shot out by the guards. "I've escaped from being kidnapped." The whole time she remains ducked down in the car; even though the shooting has stopped she's not taking any chances. It doesn't take long for the footsteps of ten men to come running at the car. She's yanked from the vehicle and onto her stomach. One set of hands pats her down for weapons while another secures her hands with zip ties.


	7. Chapter 7: Toll's Safe House

**Authors Note: Still fighting whatever I'm sick with, which has put me behind. Until I'm back up on my feet I'll most likely be updated every other day instead of every day.**

* * *

"Freeze." A loud and powerful voice shouts. Lissa looks up from the ground seeing a red headed woman in a black business suit standing at the top of the stairs, "Agent Hollis' story checks out. Release her, immediately. And clean this mess up."

Lissa is lifted up to her knees and the zip cuffs removed. "Just grabbing my phone." Lissa tells the security agents and reaches inside the car, grabbing ahold of the phone she had been using to contact Barney. She leaves the other phones and the guns for the agents to deal with. "Thank you, Ms…" Lissa begins to say as she climbs the stairs.

"Natalie Thompson, director of this branch." Director Thompson tells her, "My apologies for the welcoming you received. It's not every day we experience this kind of thing. I had just gotten off the phone with Mr. Church when I heard the security alarms go off."

"Not a problem." Lissa tells her, "My apologies for the damages, I'll personally pay for them to be fixed." Lissa casts a glance over her shoulder, the damage done is going to be rather pricey. She can't help but wonder how the FBI will cover this up. Delivery truck crash? Drunk driver? Certainly someone heard the gun shoots and called the police and/or the press by now.

"Nonsense, let's get you inside and get you a hot meal. You've been through enough." Director Thompson tells her and leads Lissa inside the building. From the way Director Thompson is treating her, Lissa has a feeling the woman is a friend of Church's. Must make for awkward birthday parties, mercenaries for hire and government officials all on the same guest list.

The next few hours fly by Lissa as exhaustion begins to kick in. Director Thompson keeps food and drinks coming Lissa's way, while keeping her in a top floor conference room. Between bites of food and sipping on a soda, Lissa begins to jot down everything she can remember on the notepad. It'll be useful in figuring out who took her and hopefully in finding Billy. She's half asleep when Director Thompson returns for her. "Your ride is here." She informs Lissa then leads her up to the roof.

A helicopter is on the landing pad with Church in the pilot's seat. "Your Dad sent me, I was closer." Church shouts out to her. A part of her can't help but be a little let down that Barney isn't here himself. Though sending Church, since he was closer, is a better idea. While Church didn't often go out into the field, he's clearly on the "Do-not-screw-with-list" of many criminals. Lissa climbs into the helicopter, giving a wave to Director Thompson before buckling herself in. After that it's a loud and bumpy ride but Lissa still finds herself dozing on and of during.

When the helicopter finally lands, she's surprised not to see the farmland at Barney's Louisiana farmhouse. Instead all she can make out is acres and acres of corn plants. Ahead she can make out a large white house which looks old. It looks like something a plantation owner would live in. Standing within a safe distance of the helicopter is Barney and the rest of The Expendables.

"Welcome to Toll's safe house." Church tells Lissa as once the helicopter is on the ground. Before the rotors have a chance to fully stop spinning; Barney is pulling the passenger door of the copter open. He unbuckles Lissa's seatbelt and then wraps his arms around her.

"Hi Dad." Lissa tells him as she wraps her arms around him. This home coming is bittersweet, she's happy to be back with Barney, but Billy isn't here. With the rotor blades no longer spinning she can make out the barking of not one by two dogs inside the house. The barks are familiar ones too. Lissa pulls back from Barney a look of disbelief on her face, "Remy? Colt?" She asks him. As far as she knew, Colt survived but she saw Remy take a bullet to the chest.

"Tool was working on prototypes for bullet proof and stab proof vest inserts that allowed the dogs to move better. Lacey tried them out in the doggie formal wear they had on at the wedding. Remy's bruised up and sore, but he's fine." Barney tells her, "They'll be happy to see you. Neither liked flying up here without you and Billy."

"Where is here?" Lissa asks looking around. The place looks like an up and running corn farm. It hardly seems like a place Toll would own.

"La Case De Toll." Toll says from where he's standing a few feet away from them, "It's the last place people would think to look for me which makes it the perfect hideout. Some locals keep the farm going for me, as better cover. So welcome." He tells her and gives her a quick hug. "Glad you're back."

"Thank you." Lissa tells him and then looks to Barney, "I take it Louisiana isn't safe?"

"Not taking the risk. Can't be worrying about our backs when we're working to get Billy back." Barney tells her, "Maggie's inside with some artsy software thing. You up for working out sketches of the men who had you?"

Lissa gives him a nod, "The sooner we find Billy the better." She hates to think what they will do to him now to make him cooperate without her there. The sooner they find him the sooner he's out of danger. She pulls the memo pad she had begun writing everything about her kidnapping down on at the FBI from the tote bag Director Thompson gave her. "I wrote down everything I could remember, even the little stuff. Just like you taught me." Lissa says and holds the pad out to Barney.

Barney flips through the pages of writing skimming it all over, "Good job, kid." He tells her as he keeps skimming. He stops at one part and looks at Lissa, "You seriously used the ring to damage the glass enough to smash the window?"

"Only option I had. I'm not The Barney Ross who can take down multiple armed guards." Lissa teases with a laugh. She looks down at her fingers, now covered in band aids by the FBI. Many of her finger tips are either blistered or tore open in places from her escape. "I barely have any finger prints, right now. Might be a good time for a crime spree." She jokes again holding up her band aid covered hands. Joking with Barney is making things feel a little bit lighter for her. Like she hadn't just been held hostage, grazed by a bullet in her upper arm, escaped and then crashed the gates at an FBI Field Office all the while her fiancée is still missing. Instead it feels like she's coming home from just another mission.


	8. Chapter 8: The Ring

After working up profile sketches of the men who took her with Maggie and then going over the details of her abduction with Barney and Lee, Lissa retreated to bed for the evening after Caesar made her eat some barbeque chicken. The past two days of lack of sleep and poor eating have caught up to her and now she just wants the comfort of sleep to help clear her mind. In the morning she'll begin to track the cyber trail of X and his followers.

Barney stands in the doorway of the room Lissa's sleeping in. Remy's snuggled up to her side while Colt is at the end of the bed, guarding Lissa from anyone who enters the room. While he had constantly been on Lissa and Billy's cases about spoiling the dogs, he's starting to see that maybe he was wrong about that. Remy nearly gave his life for Billy and now Colt is guarding Lissa, much like Barney would be right now if it wasn't for the dog. He actually pities anyone who tries to enter that room tonight.

"She's okay Barney." Maggie's voice whispers from down the hall, "Gunnar just did rounds, no signs of anything. Church's helicopter flew under the radar as well. No one is coming for her, at least not tonight."

Barney shuts Lissa's door, leaving it open just a crack so Colt can keep an eye on the hallway throughout the night. "I know Maggie." He tells her softly, not wanting to wake Lissa. "It's just she's….mine. She's been twice now on my watch and once before that. I can't let anything happen to her again. And Billy, we have to get him back not just for her sake but because I also owe him. After what happened with Vilian, I'll be dammed if someone else hurts a member of my team."

"We'll get them." Maggie assures Barney, "If there's one thing I know about you, it's that you can unleash hell on your enemies."

The sound of Colt barking which soon turns to a growl wakes Lissa.

"Damn dog, Lissa!" It's Lee shouting.

Lissa opens her eyes finding Lee pushed up against the dresser which is opposite the bed. Colt is standing up on the bed, fur standing on end growling at Lee. It's not that bright in the room, which she can only guess it's early in the morning. "Colt down." She orders and Colt listens. "Lee?"

"Those mutts should like me." Lee says, casting a glance to Remy and Colt, "We'll see who gets my steak bone next time." He then holds a piece of paper out to Lissa, "This guy familiar?"

She reaches to the bedside table, flicking the lamp on and takes the paper from Lee. Even with her mind still a bit foggy from just waking up, she recognizes the man in the picture. It's the man from outside the door. "He was there, he guard the door." Lissa tells Lee.

"I knew that mug looked familiar and it took me half the night to figure it out." Lee explains, "As you know I work a few side jobs here and there. He was on one of them. A real meathead, actually. He was only good for picking up heavy objects and looking scary. Terrible at everything else. Dylan Reardon."

"And where would one look for a Mr. Dylan Reardon?" Lissa asks him.

Lee hands her a scrap of paper with a bank account number, "I was in charge of seeing the team got paid by the boss. I kept all of their bank account numbers for my records."

She has a feeling Lee kept the account number for something more than his own records, but she doesn't say anything. His slightly paranoid attitude when it comes to working with those outside The Expendables, has paid off in giving her a lead to Billy. Lissa nudges Remy away from her side gently and gets out of bed, rushing to her makeshift computer station on an antique vanity. Besides Tolls farmhouse being an actual working farm, it's also filled with a mixture of antiques and modern comforts like big flat screen TVs. It's an odd mixture, but Toll makes it work.

Lissa pulls the small stool out from under the vanity while her computer system loads.

"How long?" Lee asks her.

"I'm going to need at least one coffee black." Lissa tells him as she sits down, setting the scrap of paper down by the mouse pad, "While it's not the CIA mainframe, it will take me a bit to find the right bank the account belongs to. More if the accounts offshore. Though if he's as stupid as you say, he should have stayed in-state."

"On it." Lee says and leaves the room without another word.

That's how an hour and twelve minutes later; they all ended up on The Expendables Plane to a small town outside Raleigh, North Carolina. Then it was a quick ride to downtown Raleigh in SUV's Tool had waiting for them. Mr. Dylan Reardon rents a top floor apartment in the downtown area.

Lissa keeps her attention on her laptop screen, searching around for any signs of Billy. The few remaining hacker friends of hers and Derek's she can get in touch with, are monitoring any camera feed they can get their hands on for traces of Billy. So far nothing, which worries her. She's flagged all of hers and Billy's bank accounts and credit cards, even the banks they have safety deposit boxes at, but she doubts the kidnappers will try to get any money from them. But she won't leave any rock uncovered. She's so caught up in hacking the last bank that she jumps when someone clears their throat from right beside her.

"Take this." Gunnar says dropping a round metal object into her hand and closing it around it. "You'll need it to remember finding Billy is priority number one, revenge second." Without another word he leaves the bench she's sitting out and rejoins Yin and Toll at the back of the plane playing cards.

Lissa opens her hand, finding Billy's wedding band there. The sight of it causes her to suck in a breath and tears to form in her eyes. She'll admit to herself she had thoughts of doing very painful things to Dylan Reardon. Not just for destroying her wedding but for taking Billy from her, for putting her through all this. But seeing the ring reminds her that dead men don't talk, Dylan needs to be kept alive for questioning.

She unhooks her compass necklace and slides the ring onto the chain, hearing it clink as it contacts with the thick metal compass Billy gave her as a gift over a year ago. Lissa closes her eyes taking in a breath and it's like she's reliving the memory all over again.

_She strolls out of the bathroom a pair of grey sweatpants and a black bra on as she towel dries her hair. They had just gotten in from a mission in Sudan and her sore muscles were grateful for the warm shower. She makes her way downstairs where Billy's playing with Remy while Colt barks from the couch. She can't help but smile at the sight of it all._

"_What happened?" Billy asks looking up at Lissa. She notices his gaze is on her chest, not her face and she can't help but let out a laugh. Though the concerned look doesn't disappear from his face as he climbs up from the floor and over to her. "Did you get shot?" He asks her and taps a finger on a circular bruise on her chest. While bullet proof vests stopped bullets, they also knocked the wind out of you and left behind bruises, and maybe an occasional cracked rib._

_Lissa looks down at the bruise; she definitely would have remember taking one to the chest. The shape is much too big to be an average bullet. "I know what it is." Lissa tells him and moves her compass pendant necklace back to where it usually rests the center of her chest and right now it covers the bruise. "One of the guards elbowed me in the chest. Guess I can't wear it out in the field anymore huh?"_

_Billy shakes his head and unhooks the necklace but holds it from falling. He drapes it down till it's resting right above the band of the bra in-between the cups. "I'll get it sized so it rests right here, always. Your vest is designed for your…assets…and will keep the compass from getting knocked into you again." He then slides the necklace off her neck and pockets it._

"_Billy Timmons, you take such good care of me." Lissa tells him in singsong tone then kisses his cheek._


	9. Chapter 9: The Compass & The Sunglasses

The close quarters attack on Reardon's apartment isn't one they like. The Expendables like big spaces that give the opportunity for big booms and fighting. Tight quarters means they need to be more controlled. But still hey all move swiftly, trying not to attract attention to themselves. After so long working together, the team is like a well-oiled machine. Today, the gears are slightly shifted with one, Billy, missing and Gunnar moving from the field to take over Billy's position.

"Got him, he's in the living room. Caesar, you can get him from the fire escape." Gunnar's voice comes through their earpieces. Yin, Caesar and Toll took the fire escape while Lissa, Barney and Lee took the only door leading into the apartment.

"About to go live, prepare yourselves." Caesar warns. They all move to cover their eyes with sunglasses and hands go over their ears. There are three clicks in the earpiece, by Caesar, before a loud bang and a flash of light follows. He had tossed a flash grenade into the living room. It's effective in disorientating Dylan, keeping him from reaching for weapons or calling in for help.

"Go time!" Barney's voice shouts into their earpieces. Barney kicks in the front door with ease and the team piles into the apartment. They find Dylan laying on the floor, covering his eyes with one hand, an ear with the other as he rocks back and forth. Barney reaches him first and grabs him by his t-shirt throwing him back on the couch.

The Expendables circle the area, daring Reardon to make a move. The effects of the flash grenade wear off in a few minutes and Reardon is looking at them all like a wild animal, like he's ready to jump and attack at the first opportunity he gets.

"Billy Timmons." Barney says firmly locking eyes with Reardon, "You're going to tell me everything about your assignment."

But Reardon doesn't answer; instead he looks past Barney and straight to Lissa, "Nice escape doll, mind have to store that trick for later."

"Something tells me there won't be a later for you." Lissa tells him through clenched teeth.

"Dump the place." Barney orders, "Even with Church controlling first responders arriving, we need to be out of here in fifteen."

Lissa takes off for the bedroom where she can make out the glowing screen of a computer monitor. Lee takes the desk in the corner of the living room, ripping through the drawers for information while Yin searches the kitchen. Toll stands by the door, silently guarding it. It leaves Barney and Caesar to stare down Reardon. Lissa busies herself with cracking the encryption on the computer, it's low-grade and exactly what she expected from someone Lee described as a 'goon'. While she types in codes she can't help but hear Barney's threats to Reardon. One of which includes tying him to the top of the plane and taking him for a joy ride, which makes her smirk.

"Time." Toll calls from the doorway, thirteen minutes later. It's time for them to get moving, any longer and concerned neighbors might come knocking. Lissa pulls the jump drive from the USB of the computer, happy to have the contents of Reardon's hard drive. She walks out of the living room just as Barney orders Reardon to his feet. When she sees the flash of metal all seems to slow down.

Reardon jerks a gun up from in-between a couch cushion. He swings it up to his temple, grins in her direction and pulls the trigger.

"No!" Lissa finds herself screaming in the seconds before the gun fires and starts running to him. Barney spins around and reaches for the gun as well as Caesar. But they are all too late. The gun goes off and blood hits the walls and many of The Expendables.

Lissa finds herself gasping for breath as she wipes a smear of blood from her cheek. Reardon was their only solid lead to Billy. Now he's gone, he killed himself right in front of them. Their chances of finding Billy are slim now, just like the chances of Reardon's family having an open casket funeral for him. "I need air." She gasps out to Barney and takes off from the apartment.

"Call Church. We need to clean this up." Barney orders the team as Lissa leaves the apartment.

Outside the air, despite being a city, feels fresher than the apartment. It's not laced with the smell of a recently fired gun or blood. She undoes the Velcro of her bullet proof vest and drops it onto a park bench outside the building. Sobs and gasps for breath follow. There wasn't much on Reardon's computer, and she doubts any of it will lead to the people who have Billy. Unless the others found something, their only lead is a dead end now. She puts a hand over her eyes and takes in deep breaths trying to calm herself down.

Just as she can hear sirens in the distance, no doubt from someone reporting a gunshot in the area, she feels a pain in her chest. The air is knocked from her lungs silencing her scream of pain. The echo of a gunshot fills the air. Lissa's knees go weak and she falls forward, landing on her side. She becomes aware of a warming sensation in the center of her chest and when she dares to peak down there's a crimson stain growing on her white tank top.

From three rooftops down the street, Billy Timmons pulls back his sniper rifle and begins disassembling it with speed. Though it's not as fast as usual, he keeps gazing down the street. If he squints he can make out Caesar and Toll running outside to Lissa's side and the yell of agony that comes from Barney is audible even three buildings down.

"I think it goes without saying, you've proved your loyalty Mr. Timmons." A voice says from behind Billy, "We need to get going now."

Billy zips the backpack up and takes one last look down the street. He then follows the man he's working for down the roof access staircase. Once outside he pulls on his favorite sunglasses, the ones Lissa bought him when they first met. When he goes to return his hands to his sides, he can't help but notice they are shaking.


	10. Chapter 10: He Shot You

Lissa opens her eyes with a start and when she goes to sit up to better catch her breath a pair of hands forces her down. She feels like she's on a boat, moving around. Nothing feels steady.

"Easy, stay still." Barney's voice tells her. There's a strict sound to his voice and worry on his face.

Her headaches and her whole body feels sore. There is a fogginess in her mind that she can only assume is from pain medication. "What?" She begins to ask. Memories are blurry and don't add up. She glances around her, finding herself to be in one of the SUV's Tool had waiting for them, that explains the feeling of moving.

"Lissa do you remember what happened?" Yin asks her as he leans over her, coming into her line of vision. His tone is much softer than Barney's. It's the type of tone that comes from a man who raised kids, many kids.

"Reardon committed suicide." Lissa answers, it's the last memory she has that isn't foggy like a dream, "Did we get anything to find Billy?"

The question enrages Barney who lets out a frustrated yell. "Don't ask about him." He shouts and shoves something into her line of vision. It dangles from his hand and she can't see it clearly, "You see that bullet? That bullet is the exact band he uses. The letter L is carved into it Lissa. He shot you! That son of a bitch shot you and the only thing that saved your life was this damn necklace."

Lissa makes out the object dangling in Barney's hand; it's her compass necklace, the gift from Billy. Close to the center of the necklace is one of the brass and silver blended bullets she recognizes from loading weapons with Billy. The necklace saved her life, Billy saved her life. But all that clarity is gone when she fully processes Barney's words. .you. .her. "You're wrong!" Lissa screams, the action causes her chest to ache, "You're wrong!" she screams again at Barney and tries to sit up in the bench seat.

"I warned you Barney!" Lee shouts, Lissa can only assume he's driving.

As she lunges out to grab the necklace from Barney, there's a sharp prick in her neck. She turns her head just to see Yin pulling back an empty syringe with an apologetic look on his face. Things go blurry and her body goes slack, the last thing she sees is Yin leaning over her as he eases her lie back in the seat.

When Lissa opens her eyes again, she's back in her room at Toll's safe house. She can tell because Remy and Colt are asleep near her. Her chest still aches, but her vision is less foggy. She feels like she's been out cold for hours.

"You're awake." Maggie says from the corner of the room. Lissa can make her out in the dim light from a lamp on the vanity. She was sitting there reading a book, which she closes before making her way to Lissa's side. "How are you feeling?"

"Is it true?" Lissa asks Maggie, feeling tears in her eyes.

Sadness creeps onto Maggie's face and Lissa knows it is before Maggie answers, "I found surveillance footage of him and an unknown man entering a building three doors down from Reardon's apartment. Based on the sniper nest location and the bullet, it was Billy."

Lissa pulls down the collar of the loose fitting t-shirt someone, most likely Maggie, changed her into. In the center of her chest, just where the compass pendant rested is a large bruise. In the center of it is a cut, sealed with two stiches. While the bullet was slowed by the compass, it sent cut through her skin. She rests a hand over her chest and finds herself letting out a scream. It's not one of fear or frustration, it's of pure agony. The man she was going to marry just days ago tried to kill her.

The scream startles Remy and Colt, who dart up from the bed looking around for an intruder. It also attracts the attention of Barney and Lee who run into the room.

"Lissa." Barney begins, there's a look of pity and apology on his face. He looks to Maggie, "She knows?"

"I don't think I could forget the way you told me." Lissa snaps at Barney. Suddenly there's nothing but anger coursing through her veins. Not just coursing, but burning. She can't stand the sight of any of them at all, she feels like this is the closest to hate she'll feel for anyone on her team. She laughs at the thought of team. Billy was on that team and he was a liar. Who's to say they all aren't the same. "Get out." She shouts at them.

"Lissa, I'm sorry, I." Barney begins to apologize, "I just saw you shot and I couldn't stand it."

"Get out." Lissa shouts again.

Maggie puts a hand on Lissa's shoulder, "Please Lissa, I know you're angry. But you need to take a breath, you need to relax."

"Go to hell!" Lissa shouts and pushes Maggie off the bed. A stunned look forms on the woman's face as she looks up to Lissa from the floor. The action makes her chest hurt, but she pays no mind to it as she gets to her feet. "Get out now, all of you!" She screams at Barney and Lee, "I don't want to talk; I don't want to take a breath. I don't want to calm down! It hurts to talk, it hurts to breathe. So leave me alone."

"Listen to her." Lee says putting a hand on Barney's shoulder. With that Barney and Maggie leave the room with Lee following behind. Once the door is shut, it's like the boiling of her blood out of anger reduces just a bit. Sobs shake her so hard she has to sit down as the hysterical crying takes over. Colt's quick to her side, licking at her face trying to make her smile.

"He tried to kill me." Lissa cries to Colt, burying her face in the dog's fur.


	11. Chapter 11: The Hunch

The sobbing breaks away to hiccups and maybe over an hour later Lissa finds herself no longer crying. Maybe she's cried this pain out of her system, for now, or maybe she's cried all she can handle. Her eyes are puffy and red from crying, her cheeks raw in some places from crying and her nose is running.

"It's…..going….to…be….okay." Lissa finds herself whispering to the room, to Colt and Remy. But she isn't sure of it herself, but she needs to say it and needs to hear it. Out of habit her hand goes to clutch the compass necklace, her sense of home and comfort, but her hand is only met with the bruise and stiches. The minor impact makes her wince in pain. Just when she thinks she'll start crying again, an idea hits her. She stumbles up to her feet and stands in front of the vanity mirror. Once again she pulls the t-shirt collar down and looks at the spot she was shot. It's exactly where the compass pendant rested, exactly.

Lissa sits down at the vanity and turns her computers on. Before she can present this hunch, she needs proof.

Two hours later, it's late in the night but all of The Expendables are awake downstairs in the living room. They are going over the data recovered from Reardon's computer with Maggie taking lead.

"Lissa." Toll says, as he's the first to notice her arrival in the room.

Maggie moves to quickly shut off the TV screen which she was using to present the information. Lissa's eyes flicker to the corner of the screen where Billy's now listed as a member of the team that took Lissa.

"Leave it on." Lissa tells Maggie and crosses the room with a USB drive in hand. She clutches it tightly, like a lifeline. "There's something you all need to see." She tells the group and plugs the drive into Maggie's laptop. She pulls up the surveillance footage she found during her hacking trip to prove her hunch. The grainy footage appears on the screen, showing a black windowless utility van on the side street next to Reardon's apartment. The back sliding door is open with two men in masks armed with guns; a third man stands in the middle, X – the man who stayed with her in the room.

The footages switch to another camera showing the van turning onto Reardon's street. It becomes clear to all of The Expendables that the men in the van were coming for Lissa -either to take her again or kill her. Then the bullet impacts with Lissa's chest and she falls to the ground. X slams the van door shut and the van peels away in the opposite direction.

"They had people on the ground." Gunnar says and looks to Barney, "They were coming for her either way."

"Lissa, this doesn't prove anything." Barney says softly.

"The necklace will." Lissa says and looks around the living room. She spots the familiar silver necklace on an end table and grabs it. Before any of them can react she pulls the oversized t-shirt off, glad she had put a bra on before leaving her room. She slides the necklace around her neck, finding the clasp broken so she has to hold it in place. "Look." She tells them all. The necklace matches up perfectly with the bruise. Through the crack in the metal, the stiches are visible. "We all know Billy is damn good at this job. So tell me why would he shoot here? The chances of doing damage, other than busting up ribs and maybe having cartilage nick the heart, this isn't a kill shot. A shot to heart or the head almost always ensures death. We all know Billy makes his kill shots, but this..."Lissa says and drops the necklace onto the coffee table before tapping her bullet wound gently, "This wasn't one. He knew exactly where the compass would be. Months ago I nearly had to stop wearing it in the field because it didn't work right with my bullet proof vest. But Billy had it adjusted so it would fall into the bra cups right above the band of it. The vest would protect the pendant from being hit into me just like it does my chest. He was aiming for it."

"Why?" Caesar asks, "An arm graze, knee shot, anything would have incapacitated you."

"They were coming for her, the men in the van." Lee says, piecing it all together, "By making them think she's dead, they aborted the mission. The Kid hit her where he knew she'd be protected but also where it would look like a kill shot."

"He was there to kill Reardon. The man in charge must have figured out we found Reardon and wanted Billy to kill him. But Reardon took care of that. So they were going to take me."

"It's a long shot." Cesar says, still not believing it.

"It makes a hell of a lot more sense that Billy shooting here." Toll pipes in.

"And I believe it." Lissa says looking to them all, "Billy didn't try to kill me, he protected me. And now we need to find him."

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**Authors Note: I have to give credit to those of you reading who figured out Lissa's compass necklace protected her. Whitelion69, kelsey112 and Moviemuncher good job!**


	12. Chapter 12: Welcome Back Agent Hollis

Its mid-morning the next day and Lissa's outside tossing tennis balls into the cornfields for Remy and Colt to fetch. She wedges her cellphone between her left ear and shoulder as it rings.

"Lissa, good morning." Tool greets after picking up.

Lissa can't help but smile when she hears Tool's voice, the uncle figure has become a big part of her life despite not always being present like the rest of The Expendables. "Morning Tool." She greets back. She knows Tool and he's not one for small talk, so she gets to the point. "I'm sure my Dad told you everything right?"

"He did." Tool answers and Lissa can almost picture him sitting in his tattoo shop looking over portfolios of artists hoping to join him there.

"So I need to ask a favor, a small one." Lissa tells him as she picks up the tennis ball Remy dropped at her feet. She throws it as hard as she can, without causing her chest to ache from the bullet wound, "You know how there's been that string of vandalism, all the graffiti?"

In the weeks leading up to Billy and Lissa's ill-fated wedding street artists had flocked to the New Orleans general area and began spray painting businesses and homes all over. Of course none of them dared to touch Tool's tattoo parlor, a place like that was one you avoided. "I'm well aware. Been keeping a baseball bat by the door, just in case they get ballsy."

Lissa can't help but let out a laugh, "Well I need an act of vandalism to happen to mine and Billy's house. A compass, spray painted somewhere visible that people watching the house would notice. And it has to be done…"

"By people who look nothing like they run with The Expendables. Yeah, I got it." Tool tells her, "I know a few kids I can talk to. You sure about this? Spray paint isn't the easiest to get rid of."

She's sure Billy has been wondering since the moment he fired the shot if he had hit or missed his target. While she's fine with the people responsible for taking her and Billy thinking she's dead, she's not okay with Billy. They fled New Orleans for Toll's farmhouse with the feeling that their respective homes there were being watched. The people watching the house will be sure to report in the vandalism and she can only hope Billy overhears it. It's the only way she can get a message to him right now. "Yeah I'm sure." Lissa answers and then jerks her head to the right; she can make out the sound of a helicopter in the distance. "Tool, I gotta go. Just take care of that for me." She shoves the cellphone into the pocket of her shirt and gives a whistle for Remy and Colt, who instantly return to her side the tennis balls forgotten.

"You heard it too?" Yin asks as he jogs up beside Lissa, handing off a shotgun to her, "Others are coming out now too."

Lissa accepts the gun from Yin, noticing her hands shake as she takes a hold of the weapon. While she had no problem in the past firing a gun, the recent shot to her chest has reminded her of the life taking abilities of the weapon in her hands. She almost fears it now.

Caesar joins them outside with a gun nearly as tall as he is over his shoulder. "I told them it was a good idea to pack Big Martha." Caesar says to them and looks through the view finder, "Here, birdie, birdie, birdie." He calls under his breath.

The helicopter gets closer and just when Caesar lets out a squeal of delight over having a visual Maggie comes running out of the house. "Don't shoot it's Church!" She calls out to them.

"Don't really see why that's a reason not to shoot." Toll says but lowers his gun.

"I have agents working around the clock to figure out whatever the people who took Billy and Lissa are up to." Church tells them. After landing he called a meeting with the whole team in the dining room. "Whoever they are, they are good with covering their tracks. From the data Maggie sent over to us to decrypt from Reardon's flash drive, we know they are planning something big. Something that involves Washington DC, which raises a lot of red flags."

"There's next to nothing good in D.C but the high class call girls. Evac them out and let them nuke it." Gunnar says with a laugh and nudges Caesar, who can't help but laugh too. The laughter becomes contagious and the whole room is joining in.

But the laughter stops when Barney rises from his seat, putting out his cigar in an ashtray. "It's a real threat. Taking out even just two senators can cause widespread panic and not to mention long term repercussions." Barney tells them, "The fact that they took Billy makes me think they will use him to take out senators, politicians, anyone of real power there."

Church gives Barney a nod, "Which is why we've taken precautions, under the radar of course. We have full security details assigned to those we feel are at the highest risk. But you all know, there are ways around what some deem impossible. The United States needs your help in protecting the country from this attack. But we can't have you running around in your usual gun slinging fashion. Which is why." Church pauses and pulls multiple black leather wallet looking items from his suit coat pocket and tosses them onto the table, "You've all been temporarily given FBI aliases. You'll have the full authority of the FBI but you'll be answering to me."

Maggie begins to distribute out the wallets, which Lissa now realizes are their badges and ID cards. A quick look of puzzlement appears on her face as she gets to one and then hands it off to Lissa. "I'd say welcome back Agent Hollis, but it looks like you're Tessa Andrews now."

Lissa takes the wallet from Maggie and looks it over. Inside is an ID card for Tessa Andrews who looks a lot like her, but has blonde hair instead of Lissa's dyed black.

"For your protection." Church tells her, "It is better if they think you are dead, for now."

"I have a habit of that." Lissa says and sets the wallet down in front of her.

"With that said, we managed to track the van that arrived at Reardon's to take Lissa." Church begins, "We have reason to believe the man known as X is at a farm outside Washington DC. We know he is armed and dangerous, so I am sending you all in."

"Wheels up in thirty everyone." Barney tells him and with that the meeting is dismissed.

Lissa can't help but feel a swell of excitement form in her chest. Church managed to find X, which means they have another lead to finding Billy. All hope isn't lost yet.


	13. Chapter 13: Barney's Green Bag

Maggie takes the wheel of The Expendables plane while the rest of the team, including Lissa, fast-rope down from the plane. With their muscles tense and ready for action, they storm their respective areas of the farm. Lissa and Lee take the farm house, Barney and Caesar the main barn, Yin and Toll the animal pen area while Gunnar watches from the plane with his sniper riffle ready.

The farmhouse is much smaller than Barney's, only a living room, kitchen and bathroom downstairs and a two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. Clearing it doesn't take her and Lee long, but Lissa enjoys every second of kicking in doors and searching for signs of X. Her fear of holding a gun has melted away from her anger over everything that's happened. Church brought a blonde wig with him for Lissa to wear, to help conceal her identity, and she has it pulled up into a ponytail to keep it out of her face.

Just outside the door to the upstairs bathroom, Lissa can tell something doesn't smell right. She opens the door and is instantly met with a strong stench. Flies buzz about the room and in the bathtub is a body in the early stages of decomposing. She brings a hand over her mouth and nose, forcing herself not to breathe in. She has to see who is in the bathtub and know for sure it's not Billy. Relief comes to her as she spots salt and peppered hair on the body. It's a man, but he's much too old to be Billy.

She back tracks out of the bathroom, closing the door quickly. "Body in the upstairs bathroom. Few days old." She says into her earpiece.

"Animal pen, clear. All we got out here is a bunch of dead bacon." Toll answers back.

There's a loud bang and Lee lets out an involuntary cry of pain. Lissa charges to the master bedroom, the room Lee was checking. A figure charges at her and she delivers a punch to his windpipe, knowing him to the ground. That's when Lissa gets a look at his face, it's X.

"You…..dead." X wheezes out.

"Boo, bitch, boo." Lissa says and delivers a kick to his head, knocking him unconscious. "Lee you okay?"

"Bugger jumped out of the closet over there. Clocked me in the head." Lee says as he climbs to his feet. There's a gash on his forehead that's dripping blood. He grabs a hold of a t-shirt which was tossed on the bed and uses it to apply pressure.

"We've got X." Lissa says into her earpiece.

"Wakey, wakey." Caesar taunts X, who is now tied up to a chair in the barn, as Caesar holds a bottle of strong smelling cleaning product under X's nose to wake up.

Slowly X's eyes open, a large bruise from the kick Lissa delivered to his face is already forming on his cheek. He blinks a few times, trying to focus his vision, then his muscles go taunt. He lets out a growl and pulls at the ropes holding him. "She's dead. What the hell is this?"

"I'd say your own personal hell, but well I have a habit of coming back from the dead." Lissa tells X. She then reaches forward, grabbing ahold of his neck cutting off his air supply. "Billy, where is he?" She demands.

"Sorry doll, I'm not in the talking mood." X wheezes out, but still manages to smirk at her.

"Yin, go get me the dark green bag from the plane." Barney orders, "Lee stay, everyone else out."

Lee moves to stand beside X, to watch him, while the rest of the team follows Barney out of the barn. Yin had handed off a large bandage to Lee which now covers the gash on his head. If they were dealing with the only lead to finding Billy, Lissa might have took a second to laugh at the site of the bald headed Lee with the large white bandage on his head.

"What are you doing to do?" Lissa asks looking to Barney

"What I have to." Barney tells her. The second Yin hands the bag off, Lissa notices that Barney goes tense. There's a darkness to his face, she can tell this is one of the moments where he's going pitch black.

Barney strolls into the barn, telling Toll and Caesar to shut the doors behind him. He places the green duffle bag down on a collapsible table then drags it over towards X. "My daughter, Lissa, was taken before. Once before I knew she was family and once after, both times it was by the same men. I let them be dragged off to a deep dark CIA operated hole instead of killing them." Barney says to X as he begins to pull items out of a bag, setting them in X's line of vision. A pair of scissors, assorted steak knives, a few screw drives, a high powered lighter, all grace the table. "Looking back at it now I realize that was a mistake. I put the message out there that if you mess with Barney Ross' family you can go to Hotel Spook. Well I'm going to need to send a new message. Just how strong of a message I send is up to you." Barney drops the last item, a common garage saw onto the table. "Tell me everything now or I'll just force it out of you."

"You don't scare me." X hisses at Barney.

"That, my friend, is a very big mistake." Lee says looking down at X. "For my friend here is going to stop at nothing to get Billy Timmons back. And I'm not going to stop him from doing it." Lee leaves X's side and pulls a few medical supplies out from the bag and sits them into X's line of vision as well. "I know how to keep a man alive, even when he's begging for death. Adrenaline injections, IV's, pressure bandages, cortication." Lee lists off. "We can turn you into a living jigsaw puzzle. I suggest you talk or else things are going to get very painful."

"Go to hell." X tells them both.

"They always want to do it the hard way." Barney says to Lee shaking his head. He grabs a hold of a kitchen knife and walks towards X, "You tell me what I need to know and this will all stop."

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**Important Authors Note: I'm in an area that's predicted to be highly effected by "The Frakenstorm" (Hurricane Sandy plus a cold front and another smaller storm combined) starting tomorrow (10/29) and lasting into the next day. Because of this I may be left without power and/or internet access, which will cause delays in getting updates up. Hopefully all goes well and there's no major damage, but if it goes bad, it may be a few days till the next update. My apologies! For anyone reading who will be effected by the storm in the coming days, stay safe!**


	14. Chapter 14: The Real Plan

On the plane ride here Lissa wanted nothing more than the blood of the people responsible for taking her and Billy. But now standing outside the bar where she hears X scream in pain, her stomach flips. There's something a little too evil for her liking about torture.

"What I don't get is why here?" Yin says to the group. Since the barn door closes, they had been trying to figure out what X was doing at the farm. They all know of much better places to hide out. Unlike Reardon, X is a personal mercenary like them. He wouldn't hide out at a safe house, he'd just disappear.

"Going to take a walk." Lissa tells the group. With air support no longer needed, Maggie and Gunnar landed The Expendable plane in an empty nearby field.

"I'll come with you." Gunnar tells Lissa and follows behind her.

The two of them start walking toward the animal pens, away from the sounds of X's screams and the smell of death in the farmhouse.

"You alright?" Gunnar asks her as they walk along. Both of them stay alert for any back up for X.

Lissa gives him a nod, "We're doing what we have to." She tells him and she knows it to be true. The only way to stop this plan for mass assassination of the senators in DC and to get Billy back is to get answers from X.

The smell of death hits her once again as they approach the animal pens. There's just under one hundred pigs all dead in the pen. Some are in various stages of decomposition and some are new deaths. All of them look plump, not like they were starved to death. The man in the bathtub had been dead for a few days at most and Maggie found out he was the farm owner. X hadn't been here for long, yet some of the pigs look like they've been dead for a while.

"Did you know pigs are close to humans? Immune system wise." Gunnar tells her. It's one of the rare moments where Lissa remembers Gunnar is a bit of a genius and not just a gun welding mad man.

"Interesting." Lissa says as they approach a small shed near the end of the pen. She figures it must be a shelter of sorts for the pigs. At a second glance, it's much too small for all the pigs and it looks new. "Was that on the building plans?" She asks Gunnar pointing ahead.

Gunnar looks the building over, "It wasn't." He answers and grabs ahold of the shotgun he has strapped against his back.

Lissa follows his lead and pulls her pistol from her hip holster. Together they move in on the shed. When they kick it open there's a blast of the stench of death. In the darkness of the shed, they can make out the form of a dead body. This one is newer than the owner, maybe just twenty four hours old. Lissa pulls a flash light from her pocket and shines it on the body, it's a woman. Maybe a little older than Lissa, but not much. When she approaches the woman to check for an ID, Gunnar puts an arm out blocking her.

He isn't looking at her though, his gaze is focused on a chemistry set in the corner of the room and a whiteboard with a bunch of numbers hangs above it. "Don't." Gunnar warns her and then grabs ahold of the back of her bullet proof vest pulling her out. "Spanish Flu." He tells her.

"Gunnar what?" Lissa asks looking to him. He's not making much sense; The Spanish Flu was irradiated a long long time ago.

"The pigs, that woman, the chemistry set. They were brewing up The Spanish Flu here. The pigs were test subjects then here. They aren't going to shoot senators, they are going to wipe out the entire fucking city." Gunnar says his eyes wide with panic and fear, "We need to warn them." He then takes off running to the group.

But Lissa has a different idea in mind. She pulls out her tablet from another side holster and looks up the Spanish Flu. She finds that the virus can stay alive in the bodies of those it killed for days. She knows how she's going to break X now.

After a quick stop to the plane to raid the first aid kit, Lissa arrives at the barn. Lee's still inside the barn with X but Barney it outside talking with Gunnar. With Gunnar rattling off facts of the flu and Maggie typing away on her own tablet, it's easy for Lissa to sneak past them all and into the barn.

"Lissa." Lee begins.

"It's important Barney." Lissa says and then holds up her tablet, showing a picture of X with a pretty redheaded woman and a little girl with matching red hair. "Your family right?" She asks X, including in the paperwork Church managed to dig up was that X had a girlfriend and a child with her.

"Leave them out of this!" X shouts at her, fighting against his ropes. He's a bloody mess and Lissa's surprises he has any strength left at all to fight. Barney and Lee have done a number on him.

"Sorry, but I can't. You made this personal." Lissa says and drops the tablet on the table. She then pulls the capped syringe filled with blood from her empty gun holster. "I took this from the dead girl out in the shed. Where you all brewed your little science experiment." She says and watches X's eyes go wide. "I think you're tough X, much too tough to crack under anything my Dad would do to you. I don't think death scares you, so that's not good motivation." Lissa then uncaps the syringe and then dives at X, injecting it into an artery in his neck. "Once you start showing symptoms of the Spanish Flu, I'll give it another day or so. Then I'm taking two syringes of blood from you, I'll make sure it's nice and potent with the virus. Then I'm going to go find your kid and your girlfriend. Infect them with it, and see how long they last."

Defeat flashes in X's eyes and he hangs his head low, "Leave them out of this and I'll tell you everything." He says.

"Good answer." Lissa tosses the syringe onto the table and walks out of the barn. The whole team is looking into the barn, they heard and saw everything. "He's ready to talk, Dad." She tells Barney.

Just when she's outside of X's line of vision, Maggie grabs ahold of Lissa's arm. "Did you really?" She asks.

"No, it was my blood." Lissa answers, but X didn't need to know that.

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**Authors Note: As mentioned in the previous chapter's authors note I will be hit by Hurricane Sandy today which has the potential to leave me without power for an extended period of time. So it may be a bit until I'm able to update again, my apologies. Since the storm isn't hitting me for another few hours I figured I'd get an update up :)**

**Second, Whitelion69, thank you for your kind words. I hope this chapter is as good as the other two have been! And I'm glad you're safe from the storm.**


	15. Chapter 15: An Attempt

**Authors Note: I made it through the storm safe and sound without losing power. Thank you all for your well wishes and hope those of you reading who faced Super Storm Sandy are okay as a well. Oh and a little shout out to brandibuckeye whose extremely kind review made my day, thank you!**

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Instead if flying back to Toll's farmhouse, Church rents out the entire top floor of an upscale hotel in downtown Washington DC. Barney was able to get from X that Billy was working for Walter Fairview, an infectious disease doctor. Well he was until he was stripped of his title and banned from practicing medicine after he was caught experimenting contagious illnesses on homeless people and went on a rant in front of the board about how diseases were nature's ways of weeding out the week. He dropped off the radar for two years. He resurfaced and managed to get a hold of cultures of the Spanish Flu from a lab that had been shut down years ago. X revealed that Walter plans to unleash the virus in D.C and let it spread across the US and then the world to weed out the weak. That is, unless The Expendables can stop them.

Lissa stands in her room, which has a view of the busy downtown streets and buildings below. She keeps her gaze out the window but doesn't focus on anything in particular, she just watches.

Barney knocks on Lissa's door, which was propped open with a gear bag, he had a tray of room service in hands. "Anything exciting out there?"

"Fairview plans to release the virus in D.C. He's most likely here." Lissa says and takes one last glance out the window, "Billy's here with him too." A sad smile forms on her face and she turns her attention to Barney. "Dinner?"

"Can you believe $20 for a hamburger?" Barney asks with a laugh as he sets the tray down on the bed and sits down. Lissa joins him too and pulls her $20 burger off the tray. "You know we'll find Billy right? We'll put an end to all of this."

"Must be Thursday then." Lissa says letting bitterness seep into her tone. When Barney shoots her a questioning look, she knows she has to explain, "Well Monday's are clearly kidnap Lissa days. Thursday is save the world from a deranged madman."

Barney lets out a laugh now that he gets the joke, "Well Friday's are normal days, didn't you hear?"

Lissa sets her half eaten burger down on the tray, grabbing a few fries from her plate, "I just feel bad for all the people out there." She says gesturing her head to the window, "They are going about their normal lives with no idea there's a sociopath ready to kill at least half of them with an eradicated disease. They have normal worries, like bills and getting their kids into the right preschool."

"And we worry about gunshot wounds, infectious diseases, and crazies." Barney adds in and takes a swig of his bottle of beer, "You know you can get out at any time. You and Billy have plenty of money, you could disappear with ease."

She lets the thought create an image in her head. Her and Billy safe on the tropical island they hid out on when Sedov and Garrett thought he killed them both in the abandoned farmhouse explosion. New names, new jobs, freedom from revenge seeking enemies and no more crazy madmen. She and Billy could live like the people in D.C, unaware and unbothered by secret terrorist plots. But the image fades away. "I could never be normal like them. Now that I know all of the evils of the world, I can't go back to pretending they are there. I'm in for the long haul." And while sometimes it feels like a curse, especially when you and your soon-to-be-husband are kidnapped on your wedding day, it's a calling for her.

Lissa opens her eyes the next morning to the hotel floor filled with life. Multiple TV's are turned on loud and she can hear people talking and going from room to room. She climbs out of bed and opens the door to her room looking out into the hallway.

"Lee? What's going on?" Lissa asks as she sees Lee rush out of Yin's room.

Lee stops in his tracks and takes a couple of seconds longer than he should to turn around and look at her. "All's fine, go back to bed." Lee tells her.

"Liar. What it is Lee?" Lissa asks.

"There's been an assination attempt on the head of County General Hospital." Lee says and pauses, "A sniper attack."

Now Lissa knows why she wasn't woken up when the news broke, they didn't want her to come and see the scene of where Billy nearly killed an innocent man. "I'll be ready in five, try to leave without me and I'll find my way there. Try to lock me in my room I'll repeal out the window." She then ducks back into her room and shuts the door.

There out of Lee's view, Lissa lets her back slide down the door as she gasps in breaths. Billy nearly killed someone today. An innocent person, the director of a hospital. She had no problem with Billy or her killing when it came to work; the enemies they faced were bad men. The world was better off without them. But the innocent? It's wrong. If she's feeling this hurt she can only image how Billy feels.

Attempt.

The word flashes before her eyes. Billy didn't succeed, which only gives her more hope that he's still on their side. Billy doesn't miss a target ever. She stumbles up to her feet and grabs the TV clicker, putting in on and changing to the local news station.

"Reports say Hospital Director Kathleen Murdock was leaving County General to attend an offsite meeting. She turned to say hello to a co-worker when she was shot in the arm. Murdock was rushed inside the hospital and the facility was put on lockdown. Sources inside the hospital say that Murdock's injury is not life threatening and she is expected to make a full recovery."

Lissa listens to the newscast as she grabs clothes from her gear bag. Just as she's about to put on combat pants, she stops. Here in D.C she's not Lissa Hollis, Expendables. She's Tessa Andrews an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She drops the combat pants on her bed and pulls the dry cleaning bag from her closet. A hotel concierge had delivered the bag last night after Barney left. There was a card on the outside saying it was from Church, but she didn't bother opening it, just hung it up in the closet. Looks like she's back to Fed wear.


	16. Chapter 16: The Feddables On Scene

**Authors Note: Happy Halloween everyone. And since it's Halloween, don't you think you're all deserving of a treat? Read below to find yours!**

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Lissa Hollis stands outside County General Hospital, the largest hospital in Washington, D.C. It's now also a crime scene, after the botched assassination attempt on Kathleen Murdock, the hospital director. Church's team of FBI consultants, aka The Expendables, were called in to see if this attempt is at all related to Walter Fairview's, survival of the fittest terrorist attack that X told them about. The thought of X makes her shiver even while standing in the warm sunlight.

They didn't leave the farm house until Church's people had secured it and brought in the CDC. That was after Church discretely gave the go ahead for a few agents to take multiple cardboard boxes from the barn Barney and Lee tortured X in. They were addressed to a man Barney had her look up, the man who got X his assignments. She didn't even want to think of looking in the boxes, she knew Barney was going to be sending a message in a very bold and bloody way.

Pushing the thoughts of blood and gore from her mind, Lissa scans the crowd behind the crime scene tape. There are curious bystanders and the usual media circus. But to them she's just another FBI agent. When she had strolled out of her hotel room, Gunnar couldn't help but laugh at her "standard issue fed costume". Yet she wears the black pants suit with a white blouse underneath with a pair of aviator sunglasses, much like the ones she bought Billy when they first met, perched on top of the blonde wig she's wearing.

Lissa spots Lee standing by an ambulance talking with a few witnesses. He too is in the standard issue fed costume of a black suit with a white shirt and black tie. Lissa can't help but think he pulls that off well too, Lee is just one of those people who can pull off anything. Since her and Lee look more the part of Feds they are the only ones checking out the crime scene, the others are in a surveillance van nearby.

Getting back to work Lissa looks down at the tablet computer in her hand, Lee gets the job of talking to witnesses while she gets to figure out the shots trajectory. The pressure is on her since she needs to figure it out before any ambitious techs try to. The Expendables, of "The Feddables" as Gunnar started calling them; need to find the snipers nest before anyone else in case Billy is involved. Lissa can't help but wish Billy was here with her now. He'd know exactly where the sniper had been perched without having to do measurements like her.

She plugs in information as she gets it, including the height of the director and wind speed. It all goes into a program brand new and straight from the CIA meant to help identify locations of snipers.

"Found the missing bullet!" A crime scene technician shouts from the small garden outside the hospital doors. Curious Lissa walks over just as he drops the bullet into a plastic evidence bag. He shakes it around trying to get a clearer look at it, "There's something on it." He mumbles while he fiddles with it in the bag.

Lissa feels her heart stop when she makes out the letter "L" on the bullet. It's distorted from being fired and it was clearly carved into the metal with haste, but she knows it's an L. The air is sucked from her lungs at the sight of the letter. It looks identical to the one they pulled from her compass necklace. "Where did you find it exactly?" She asks the tech, not bothering to hide the urgency in her tone.

"Right in the flower bed over here, I nearly missed it but saw the damaged petals." The tech explains and points out where he found it.

She takes a step forward and sees the flower bed where the bullet was discovered to be filled with marigolds. When they were doing landscaping at the house, Billy had jokingly confessed that he thought only people named Mary Gold could grow marigolds. Combining the flowers with the "L" on the bullet she knows Billy was here. Billy was the sniper. It wasn't an assignation attempt that was botched by accident, it was done deliberately. Her tablet beeps with the simulation done and Lissa looks down at the screen, the shot was fired from the roof of an office building four buildings away. "I'll take this to be processed." Lissa says taking the evidence from the tech, there's no way she's going to leave behind evidence that could get Billy in trouble.

The tech doesn't get time to protest because Lissa takes off in a brisk walk. She presses the ear bud in her right ear in more, "Lee, follow me now." She leaves the crime scene taped off area after tucking the bullet into the pocket of her blazer. The press hounds her for quotes and she pushes her way through when Lee meets her.

"What is it kid?" He asks, concern forming on his face when he notices the look of determination on hers.

Lissa hands him the evidence bag, "It was Billy. I'm sure of it." She doesn't know what she'll find in the snipers nest, but she can only hope Billy left her another clue.

Lee takes one side of the roof while Lissa takes the other. In the far corner she spots something and squints to make it out with the glare from the sun. She gasps when she realizes it's a person. She starts running across the gravel roof yelling for Lee. She approaches the person and feels her heart stop yet again, it's Billy. She can hear Barney on the other end of the ear bud in her ear demanding to know what's going on.

Lissa drops to her knees next to him and feels for a pulse. It's weak, but he's breathing. There's a blood stain on the grey gravel by his head.

"Bloody hell." Lee says once he's next to Lissa, sucking in a few breaths from running. "Barney, we've got Billy. He's alive but unconscious and hurt."


	17. Chapter 17: Blind

The events that follow Lissa and Lee finding Billy all seem to go past Lissa in warp speed. The rest of The Expendables are on the roof one second then the next they are in an SUV heading back to the hotel, the next a doctor on the CIA payroll arrives. Things don't slow down until Lissa is sitting outside the hotel room Billy was brought into. She was forced from Billy's side and the room when the doctor and his assistant arrived. The blood stained suit began to stick to her chest and she left the hallway outside Billy's room only to quick change and has Yin take her post outside the door. Washed up and changed into sweatpants and a tank top, she returns to relieve Yin. "Thanks. I'll take it from here." He tells him, she figures he's probably hunger and in need of a change of clothes as well.

Yin gives one of her shoulders a squeeze and then heads down the hallway. A second set of footsteps fill the hall and without looking Lissa knows it's Caesar. His heavy steps stand out among the group, though she sometimes confuses them with Gunnar's.

"Watched pot never boils." Caesar tells her and then holds a metal object about the size of a pill bottle down to her. "Just don't burn the place down." He then calls after Yin to wait up and they'll grab something to eat.

Lissa looks at the object in her hand; it's a lighter she's seen Caesar fiddling with on the plane. She knows all too well if Caesar's had his hands on it, it's a lot more deadly than it looks. She holds it out at arm's length and turns the lighter on. A large flame filled with flickers of orange and blue shoots out from it. She considers it more of a mini flame thrower or a blow torch than a lighter. But it gives her something to do instead of just watching the door. She pauses the time by flicking the lighter on and off.

When the door to Billy's room finally opens, she nearly drops the lighter on the floor.

"Miss. Hollis?" The assistant asks looking to Lissa and when Lissa nods she smiles, "This way, you can see him now."

Wordlessly, Lissa follows the doctor's assistant into the room. She's mentally telling herself to prepare for the worst.

But Billy is sitting up in bed with his back to Lissa and the assistant. There's a medium sized bandage at the back of his head. There's an IV stand nearby with a blood bag and IV hanging from it and connected to his arm. At the sound of assistant's steps, it turns around and looks right at them both. He looks tired and pale from what she's assuming is the blood loss.

"Was Lissa out there?" Billy asks.

The words cause Lissa to freeze in place and the air is sucked from her lungs. He's looking right at her and the assistant. _Head injury_. The words race through her mind and she finds herself rushing to Billy's side. She places a hand on one side of his face and tilts his head back. While his eyes move to look up at her, they are cloudy and unfocused.

"Lissa?" Billy asks putting a hand on hers. "Lissa." He confirms.

"What happened to him?" Lissa demands looking to the doctor and his assistant. Her mind is slow clouded with worst case scenarios that she can't even process that it's Billy in front of her. She just keeps thinking the word blind over and over again. With each heartbeat in her chest it's like her heart is calling out the word. _Blind. Blind. Blind_. Billy can't be a sniper if he's blind. Billy can't be an Expendable if he's blind. Billy's whole life is going to change if he's blind. And the next thought that comes to mind is laced with the feelings of going pitch black. I will kill them if Billy is blind.

"Mr. Timmons suffered a brain injury that has caused swelling in his brain. Because of this pressure is being put on his occipital lobe, causing the blindness." The doctor explains, "The swelling will go down in the next twenty four to forty eight hours and his vision will begin to return as the swelling goes down."

"So he'll be okay? Back 100%?" Lissa asks. She knows she could adjust her life around Billy being blind or even partially. There's bound to be some genius or medical company out there with technology to help those who are vision impaired. It's just a few hacks away from having the patents for the products in her hands. And if she can't find someone to build it, there are bound to be prototypes she can steal. But her worry is Billy. His whole life revolves around seeing and she isn't sure he'd be able to recover from something like this. How would he feel every time she left for a mission with The Expendables and he'd be left sitting in the farmhouse?

"I can't be sure the extent of the damage to the occipital lobe until the swelling goes down. There could be some vision problems, there could be nothing. It's a matter of waiting and seeing." The doctor explains. He then hands a business card to Lissa, "Call me if there are any changes, if not I'll be back in two days. Mr. Church assured me that you all are capable enough to remove the needle from the IV and blood bag when they run out. That'll be all he needs. I'll send over a bottle of pain medication for him to take as needed."

"Thank you doctor." Billy answers as Lissa takes the card.

The doctor and the assistant gather up their equipment and leave shortly after. Lissa and Billy remain in silence till the door is shut and they are left alone, for the first time since the day before the wedding. That's when the worry over Billy's vision, the anger over him being hurt and the constant thoughts of never see him again all crumble away and leave behind the emotionally vulnerable Lissa Hollis. "You're here." She says to Billy with tears in her eyes.

"I'm here." Billy answers. He scoots over in the bed and then blindly reaches out to grab ahold of her other hand. It takes him two attempts but he finds her and eases her to sit down on the bed. A hand goes up the hem of her tank top and up to the bullet wound from a few days ago when he shot her. When his fingers touch the stiches, she can't help but wince in pain. This causes worry to form on his face and his body to go tense. "How bad?" He asks her.

"Just a couple of stiches, some bruising and some cracked cartilage in the nearby ribs. Not enough to slow me down." Lissa assures him, "The compass on the other hand…"

Billy's hands move to either side of her face and while his eyes are focused more on her forehead than her eyes, she knows he's trying to look her in the eyes and mean every word he says. "I had no choice. They were going to take you again. They were going to infect you with the Spanish Flu. I couldn't…"

The tears roll down her cheeks more and she wraps her arms around him, breaking her head from him his grip. "You did what you had to." Lissa tells him firmly, "I'm alive because of you. Don't you dare feeling guilty over shooting me you got that?"


	18. Chapter 18: The Second Compass

Over the course of the following twenty four hours, The Expendables got back to work tracking down Walter Fairview. Billy shared very bit of information he could remember with them to see if it would help. He knew that Walter planned to set off a spray canister of the Spanish flu in an area with high foot traffic. In D.C, that could be anywhere. Billy also knew Fairview altered the strain and made it resistant to the current vaccines. This left Church scrambling to pool together the best and the brightest from the CDC to work with the body they recovered from the farm to create a new vaccine. But it's a slow progress and the virus wasn't fully active in the body by the time they got around to trying vaccines.

Lissa's down the hall in Maggie's room where the two of them are working off multiple computer systems trying to find any sign of Fairview in DC. But after hours of searching, neither were having much luck.

"Use your debit card!" Lissa shouts at the computer monitor in frustration. If they don't find Fairview before he releases the flu, half the population of the world is at risk of death. The stakes are higher than ever.

"We'll find him Lissa." Maggie assures her and pats Lissa on the back, "Him losing Billy as a sniper changed up his plan. He's scrambling now, he'll make a mistake." Fairview's originally plan had been to use Billy to shoot the canister, setting off the flu. It would keep both him and Billy out of harm's way. Now with Billy gone and X in pieces, Fairview has to figure out a new way to distribute the flu. Fairview had believe Billy was on his side after Billy shot Lissa. Fairview had assumed Lissa to be dead, but Billy knew otherwise. Especially when Fairview's men who were watching Billy and Lissa's farmhouse reported kids spray painted a compass and other things on the front door. That's when he knew his plan to shoot the compass worked. The moment Billy botched the assassination attempt on the hospital director; Fairview knew Billy wasn't on his side. He bashed Billy's head in with his briefcase and left him for dead.

"Lunch, down in the café." Toll tells them as he peeks into Maggie's room.

Caesar had found their floor of the hotel had a small café area for guests to use. There were a few vending machines with snacks and sodas, a microwave and a few tables. After a few tables from unused rooms were dragged out to the café, there was enough room for them all to eat together. It helped make things seem a little more normal, like they were back having a barbeque at Barney's farmhouse.

"I'll go get Billy and I'll meet you there." Lissa tells Maggie and gets up from their makeshift workstation and heads down the hall to her room. Billy's vision had slowly been returning as the swelling went down. For the most part he was only seeing shadows and constantly complained of things being too bright. He was surprisingly adjusting well to life without full vision. Barney said it was because more went into Billy's sniper abilities than just sight. It was calculations, finding the right spot, figuring out wind speed and firing at the right moment. When she arrives to their suite, she finds the living room and dining area empty. When she had left to work with Maggie, Billy had been sitting in front of the TV. "Billy?" Lissa calls out.

When she gets no reply, little butterflies of worry begin to flap to life in her stomach. Lissa reaches into her gear bag by the door, pulls out a pistol and checks the clip. It's loaded and ready to go. With a hand on the gun, she makes her way into the bedroom. Lissa doesn't let her mind wandering to figure out how someone could have gotten past them all and into hers and Billy's room. Instead she keeps her train of thought focused on finding Billy and shooting whoever has broken in.

Lissa takes in a breath outside the half closed bedroom door and lets it out slowly. Then she lets her muscles tense up and kicks open the door, walking in with her gun ready. But just like the living room/dining area it's empty. The closets and bathroom are empty too. Now the worry in her stomach is coming to life like a tornado. Without missing a beat she rushes out of the room and down the hall to the little cafeteria. "Lunch has to wait." Lissa tells the group, "I'm declaring it open season on Walter Fairview. Billy's gone." She explains.

"Impossible!" Toll is the first to chime in, "Church himself rigged up the new access panel in the elevator. Nobody gets up here without a code and there's a jammer in the elevator to prevent cameras from recording it."

"Well he found a way. You need the code to bring the elevator down too. Billy's near blind and doesn't know it, there's no way he left on his own." Lissa explains.

Caesar gets up from the table, grabbing a hold of a shot gun which was propped up against a cabinet. "Kill shots allowed or just ones to slow him down?" He asks Lissa, like he was asking if she wanted grated cheese on her pasta.

While The Expendables debate over what to do about Billy being missing again, their attention is drawn to the elevator which dings with an incoming.

"We're all here." Gunnar says and grabs ahold of a gun. He had been on team "There's-more-to-Billy-not-being here". And with that they assemble in the hall looking straight at the elevator with their guns raised.

Lissa keeps her grip tight on the pistol, so tight she can see her fingers growing pale. With all of them present and there being no word from Church about anyone stopping by, it means the person or people in the elevator are enemies.

The Expendables watch in silence as the doors slowly open. Their fingers are all on the trigger, ready to take out whoever is inside. It's much to their surprise when a familiar voice shouts out "Woah, don't shoot boys."

Barney Ross stands in the elevator with Billy nearby. Barney raises one hand, in a mock surrender, "I know we're late for lunch but isn't this a bit much?"

"Way to be off with the head count idiot." Lee sneers to Gunnar and lowers his weapon, "We went on high alert when Lissa couldn't find Billy and Gunnar claimed we were all accounted for.'

"Last I saw Barney he was in his room." Gunnar says looking to Lee as he lowers his weapons as well. "Sorry boss." He tosses the apology to Barney then heads back to the cafeteria area.

Lissa releases the near-death grip she has on the pistol and hands it off to Caesar, who takes it then follows Gunnar's lead to get lunch. "I couldn't find you." She tells Billy.

With Barney's aid, Billy makes it so he's standing in front of Lissa. "I should have told you I was going out. I'm sorry." Billy apologizes and then reaches into his pocket. He pulls a small white jewelry box from his pocket, "But I kind of wanted this to be a surprise and Barney agreed to help. If it's not exact, you'll have to blame Barney for that one, not the semi-blind guy."

Lissa takes the box from Billy, curious of the contents, and opens it open. Inside is a compass necklace near identical to the one Billy gave her then later shot. There's slight differences in the detail etched into the compasses design and the needle of the compass is a bit different, but it is near exact. She flips it over, finding the coordinates to be slightly different than the last. "Our house?" Lissa asks.

"Our house." Billy answers with a grin, "You like it?"

"Love it." Lissa says and then wraps her arms around him, hugging him and kissing his cheek, "Just don't go anywhere without telling me. In our life it's much more likely you've been kidnapped than stepped out to get a gallon of milk."


	19. Chapter 19: We Can Breathe Now

Its two days later when the doctor and his assistant finally return to check Billy's recovery status. As Billy sits on the bed in their room with the doctor and assistant looking him over, Lissa sits on the edge of the large window overlooking downtown D.C. She silently watches every move the doctor makes and watches his face for any reactions. A twitch of the mouth towards a frown could mean bad news just like extra tests could. The hard edge of the window, like a mini window seat, is short and clearly not meant for sitting. But she finds herself doing it anyways; it does nothing to help her edge-of the-seat-feeling.

"Working on something good over there?" Billy asks Lissa as the doctor looks a few brain scans over from a portable scanner.

Lissa looks up at him, confused at first then realizes her fingers were moving on her lap like she was typing. They had gotten a lead on a few bank accounts of Walter Fairview's and Lissa had spent hours with Maggie trying to hack into the accounts and then hack into any other accounts those lead them to. It was an endless game of following breadcrumbs. With so many extended periods of time spent hacking, it's no wonder her fingers still think they should be typing. "You can see it?"

That question and variations of it became a popular question to ask Billy. Whether it was Gunnar tossing chips in his direction or Yin trying to sneak up on him. It times it became like a game to test how well Billy's other senses were adjusting to his blindness. And while he laughed about it around the team, Lissa saw his frustration behind closed doors. Just last night he had thrown down his sniper rifle, frustrated that he could take it apart and reassemble it in under a minute but he couldn't shoot it. While his vision was slowly returning it clearly wasn't fast enough for his liking.

"Kind of, I mostly hear it." Billy answers.

"Mr. Timmons, things are looking very good." The doctor tells him, "The swelling has gone down a lot of its own. I'm going to give you a mild medication to help move things along. At this point in time I don't see why you won't make a full recovery. The stiches in the back of your head are causing things to heal up nicely too. I suspect they'll need to come out in a couple of days. I can schedule with Mr. Church to come back."

Billy shakes his head, "No need Doc. I'd hate to see you have to come back here again. I've got a whole team known for giving themselves stiches, among other things. Taking them out is easy, I've got that covered." He says with a small grin. And it's true, Lissa can't count the number of times someone grabbed a steak knife to pop out healed stiches then go right back to eating dinner.

"Very well then." The doctor says and looks a little uneasy. But he must want out of here because he and his assistant pack their things up and are out the door when they are done.

"We can breathe now." Billy says and lets out a sigh as he lies back on the bed.

Lissa climbs off the windowsill and lies down beside him, "We would have been okay, even if you didn't recover 100%." She tells him and kisses his cheek.

"I know." Billy answers, "But I'll be glad to get back to normal."

"Normal? I think this is normal." Lissa laughs.

"You know what I mean, the normal where we're back in our house with our dogs." Billy tells her and then lets out a sigh. With them in D.C, Lissa got word that Booker had picked the dogs up at Toll's safe house and got them to Tool back in New Orleans.

Lissa lets out a sigh now, "I miss that normal." She answers. Having Billy back is a good thing but it's also a tease for the life they had the day before the wedding. The one where they trained with the dogs out in the yard in the morning and went to bed in their own bed at night. The life where they weren't the only force standing in the way of a madman set out to kill half the world's population – or more. "Though that normal does feature one angry father of the bride who had to pay for our wedding that didn't happen. Might want to find a new normal like it."

Billy lets out a laugh, "I'm waiting for Barney to break down the cost of the wedding in jobs. I can just hear him saying you know that disaster cost me two drug lord take outs, one rich guy extraction and a top secret Church mission. And this? Saving the damn world doesn't pay the damn bills." He tries to do a Barney impression that leaves the two of them in near tears laughing.

"Lacey is going to blow a gasket when she sees my dress." Lissa tells him, "I'm sure she's going to tell me that dresses are for special occasions not for making a tourniquet and that I should have bleed all over someone's cheap polyester blend instead." She says in between laughs.

"You didn't deserve to have that happen you know." Billy says and all humor is gone from his tone. It's replaced with seriousness and sadness, "I wanted that day to be perfect for you. After everything you deserved it and it got ruined. And I'm so sorry for that."

Lissa props herself up on one elbow so she's leaning over him a bit, "Billy Timmons you have nothing to be sorry about. What happened wasn't either of our faults." Lissa tells him, "I'd be just fine marrying you while wearing combat gear and shooting down Mexican drug cartel members. The dress and the location don't matter. I'd say food too but let's face it that place had amazing food."

"How about Hawaii Drug Cartel members? Much better scenery." Billy asks and the sadness is gone from his tone now and the bit of humor is back. "When this is all over Lissa Hollis I'm going to marry you even if I have to do so in a panic room so no one can interrupt."

"I'm going to hold you to that Billy Timmons." Lissa says and then kisses him.

* * *

**Authors Note: I don't see that many more chapters in the future (somewhere around 5 but less than 10). So if there is anything you'd like to see happen before it's over feel free to suggest it below. **


	20. Chapter 20: Today Changes Everything

Loud beeping of something that sounds like an alarm clock jerks Lissa awake in bed at the same time it does Billy. He's reaching for a handgun on the bedside table while she climbs out of bed. There's something about that sound that's important and it takes her sleep clouded mind a few seconds to process it.

"It's my computer." Lissa tells Billy and heads into the living room area where her laptop is resting on the coffee table. She sits down, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and reads the contents on the screen over. The beeping was an alarm for any activity by Fairview that she set up.

"Liss?" Billy asks as he stands in the doorway. His hair half a mess with bedhead, there's a concerned look on his face. She can only guess that the medication from the doctor helped for it didn't' take him long at all to make it from the bedroom to here and she didn't hear him stumble into anything.

"The Director of the local CDC chapter was just found dead at his home. And they think it was the flu that killed him, severe flu. Something like they've never seen before." Lissa says not believing the words she's reading. She had set up alert profiles on her laptop including anything involving the flu that could implicate Fairview's involvement. With no signs of Fairview for over two days she had hoped that Billy's betrayal had given him cold feet. "Today could change the world."

"Taking out director of the Center of Disease Control leaves everything in chaos, the perfect time to unleash the Spanish flu." Billy says and grabs his cell phone off the small table, pulling it free from the charger while dialing Barney's number. "Fairview is putting his plan into place today."

The little cafeteria area on their hotel floor is fully alive with activity. Weapons are being loaded and gear is all by the elevators. Cesar doles out food to make sure everyone is full and alert come game time. Lissa and Maggie's computer base has been moved out into the hallway near the cafeteria as well, allowing more eyes to watch the screens for signs of Fairview.

"Lissa, you got a second?" Barney asks coming up beside her.

Lissa looks to Maggie, who nods okay so Lissa follows Barney down the hall to his room. Billy's standing inside, a determined look on his face.

"Billy says he's coming." Barney tells Lissa, "And while I might be the captain of the team, I'm not making that decision. Not without your blessing."

She can't help but let a small smirk form on her face. For in other words, Barney Ross is scared of what his daughter might do if he allows Billy back on the team without her consent. "We're going to need all hands on deck. But you're not alone, Yin stays with you." Lissa says looking to Billy. With the threat of half the world or more dying from Spanish flu she can't afford to have her concentration spilt between worrying about Billy's safety and worrying about saving the world.

"Deal." Billy answers and then looks to Barney, "I'll go get my gear loaded up then, sir."

"We're going in hot." Barney tells the team as they all ride together in a large utility van to downtown D.C. Maggie had spotted Fairview heading there with a dozen hired muscle escorting him. While they didn't run background checks on the muscle, they all knew Fairview hired mercenaries to protect him. Mercenaries skilled like The Expendables, but only working for whoever paid the most money, not for a worthy cause, "Everyone take extra ammo, you will need it." He drops a bag of flipped gun clips to the center of the van and everyone reaches to grab extras.

"From what I can tell Fairview is carrying a briefcase armed with an aerosol container which is loaded with the Spanish flu. Do not shoot the briefcase, if anything protect it. I've picked up the signal of a timer set to the case and am working with analysts at the CIA to jam the signal and keep it from counting down." Maggie shares with the group, "The transit authority is shutting down all subway service in the area under the false pretense of a gas leak. We're keeping the area looking normal but trying to keep as many people from being in the way."

Barney nods to her, "The number one priority in this mission to get that briefcase away from Fairview and to a confined area. The CDC is moving in to back us up in containment. Billy and Yin, I need the two of you providing sniper support from the office building across the street. Everyone else, you are on the ground with me."

"Up ahead." Lee shouts from the driver's seat, "Hire goons and their guns don't look happy to see us." Gun fire opens up on the van just as Lee finishes speaking. He swerves the van the best he can so it is out of the line of fire.

"Be safe." Billy tells Lissa and kisses her just before Gunnar pulls the van doors open and they all run out of the van firing their own weapons. And for the first time in a long time The Expendables are met with strong opposition that is close to their own match. Barney is yelling for Billy to get into position to provide support. While the others begin their fight whether it's hand to hand or firing from a covered position. Even with their opponents being close to equal to The Expendables, The Expendables fight harder than they ever have. Losing doesn't mean going home with bullet wounds and maybe burying a friend. Losing guarantees funerals for most of them and millions of people in the world. Losing unleashes The Spanish Flu.

* * *

**Authors Note: My apologies for the lack of updates the past two days, I wasn't feeling the greatest. Also, this chapter is a major "filler" chapter for a huge bit of action that comes in the next. I'm nearly done with it so it will be up tomorrow for sure!**


	21. Chapter 21: Fairview vs Hollis

Lissa clutches her lower stomach where bullets had impacted with her bullet proof vest. Beside her, she can hear Toll's unsteady breathing while he lays unconscious. Fairview's large group of mercenaries for hire certainly have an advantage over them. She keeps her head low while looking up to see Fairview and two of the biggest mercenaries heading to the subway entrance. With things taking a turn for the worst quick, Billy and Yin never make it to the sniper post. Instead Barney calls them back to provide back-up on the ground. With Fairview and the men heading for the subway, they must not know that The Expendables got the subway shut down. While it will help decrease the amount of people infected, the subway tunnels are a perfect way for the virus to spread throughout the city instead of being contained to one area.

She can't let that briefcase go off somewhere in the open, it needs to be contained till the CDC can arrive to deal with it. A flash of light catches her attention and she spots Barney hunched behind a flipped over table from the nearby food truck. His lucky skull ring glimmers in the sunlight. Without speaking a word she both knows they are agreeing on the same thing. Lissa grabs a hold of metal dinning tray, also from the food truck, and then looks to Barney holding up three fingers.

When she's done counting down the two charge at Fairview and his two men. Lissa uses the food tray to block bullets from hitting her head. When she's close enough she tosses the tray to Barney to use as a weapon and tackles Fairview. Her momentum sends them both flying down the stairs to the subway platform, the exact thing she didn't want.

Lissa's head spins and her body aches in multiple places from where the stairs impacted with her body. Part of her screams for her to stay down and wait for help, but the other knows it's not an option. She forces herself up to her feet at the same time Fairview does. "You're not getting away with this." Lissa tells him. She freezes when she spots the gun in his hand that's pointing right at her.

"Times running out, dear. I think I will. Hands behind your head, now Miss. Hollis." Fairview tells her and taps the barrel of the gun on the top of the briefcase where the timer is counting down the minutes till the canister instead sprays the Spanish flu virus into the air. "Though I'm so glad I have these few minutes, before your death of course. Ever since Mr. Timmon's betrayed me for you, I've been oh so curious to meet the woman worth dying for."

Lissa complies with Fairview, putting her hands at the back of her neck. "What a coincidence because I'm been waiting to meet you too." She tells him, letting her anger seep into her tone. She keeps her eyes locked on Fairview as she lets her fingers feel out the clasp to her compass necklace. "Of course my reasons are very different than yours."

Fairview lets out a small laugh, "I can see why he loves you. So headstrong, so determined, but for the wrong things. A woman like you Miss. Hollis could have a very profitable future working for the right people, like me."

"My loyalties are to The Expendables, not the highest bidder." Lissa sneers at Fairview and then grins as the necklace comes unhooked. "You know how you said you wanted to meet the woman Billy would die for? She's also the same woman that's going to kill you." With that she pulls the compass necklace free from her neck and with one quick motion throws it at Fairview, hitting him in the face. It stuns him for only a few seconds but it's enough to let her close in on him and deliver blow after blow.

Beaten and bloody, Fairview falls to the ground landing on his back. He looks up to Lissa with a panicked look on his face and holds his free hand up in surrender. "Killing me won't stop this from going off. And when it goes off it will travel all through the station and to the next and the next. You can try to drag me to the subway car but I'll fight the whole way you'll never make it." He taunts her.

Lissa glares at Fairview and then begins looking around the station to size up her options. Just a couple of feet behind Fairview there's an emergency axe in a glass case to be used in the event of a fire. The thought of what she'll have to do next makes her stomach flip, but walks over to the case anyways.

Fairview must catch onto her plan because he begins to scoot away on the floor. "You won't do it Miss. Hollis. I know all about you. You didn't kill the man who gave you that scar on your hand or the man who ordered it to be done."

Lissa smashes an elbow through the safety glass and pulls the axe free just as the fire alarm begins to sound in the subway platform. "Just like the scene in the Titanic," Lissa coaches herself under her breath as she approaches Fairview, "But instead of breaking Leo free you're saving the world." She swings the axe up resting it on her shoulder.

"You won't! You don't kill in cold blood Alyssa!" Fairview protests with desperation coming through his tone, "This isn't who you are."

"When you nearly killed the person I love, this is the person I've become." Lissa tells him and pulls Fairview's discarded gun from the back waist band of her pants and fires a single shot into his head. She then drops the gun to the ground before putting her attention on the axe. The blade swings down, hitting his wrist. It takes three swings before the briefcases is fully free from the Fairview, the whole time she's thankful for the noise of the fire alarm which keeps her from hearing things she knows would make her sick.

"Lissa!" Barney shouts as he starts taking the stairs two at a time. Gunnar is beside him, holding a gunshot wound to his stomach and Billy is behind them, watching their backs with an arm raised. "How long?" He shouts, "Maggie is working on a way to shut the timer down. She needs another few minutes."

Lissa looks down at the timer, twenty three seconds left. "Twenty three." She tells Barney. A chill runs through her bones as she realizes there's no time to stop the Spanish flu from being released. Maggie can't shut it down this quick and the CDC is too far away. Containment is on them. She finds herself looking past Barney and to Gunnar. While Gunnar might be a madman, he does understand the consequences of the flu being released into the world.

Gunnar must have the same realization because a grave look forms on his face. There's a flash of sorrow in his eyes and then he nods to her. "Go." He shouts and then shoves Barney backwards onto the stairs, knocking him from his feet. He moves to block Billy next.

Lissa catches a flash of Billy's face before she grabs ahold of the briefcase. "I'm sorry." She whispers feeling tears in her eyes and then runs for the open doors of the empty subway car which was left behind when the station was evacuated.

"Lissa no!" Billy screams in protest. While she can hear Billy and Barney fighting against Gunnar, Lissa doesn't look back. Once inside the subway car she places the briefcase down on the center of the floor and pulls the emergency handles above one of the doors. All three doors to the car slam shut, locking Lissa in. Without an emergency access key, the doors can't be opened from the outside. Which means Barney, Billy, Gunnar and the rest of the world will be safe from the Spanish flu.

As a few tears roll down her cheeks, Lissa goes to clasp her hand around her compass necklace but then remembers it's somewhere on the subway platform. Her hand bumps against the breast pocket of her vest and she realizes something is inside. She opens the pocket up, finding the high powered lighter Cesar gave her the day she was waiting outside Billy's hotel room to see how he was. Barney and Billy are banging against the doors of the car, trying to break in, which only makes the tears fall more.

Lissa clutches a hand around the lighter and closes her eyes, trying to find some peace in the situation. The people she loves and millions of others will live because of her. Thousands of bodies won't be mass cremated to avoid the Spanish flu spreading from the body of the deceased. She'll die a hero, an Expendable.


	22. Chapter 22: Caesar's Lighter

The thought of cremation, well more the fire causes Lissa's eyes to jerk open. She can hear one important sentence being replayed in her head. "The only way to kill the virus is fire." Gunnar had told them on the plane ride back from the farm where they found X. Lissa looks down at Caesar's mad man evil science project and sees it as the best thing he could have ever given her that day. It's a chance for her to survive.

Tuning out the sounds of Billy and Barney's banging and yelling, she focuses on the timer. She waits till just when the timer ticks to one and opens up the flame of the lighter. When the aerosol begins to spray out, it's met with a blast of fire destroying it with a fire explosion equal to a small firework. She keeps the lighter going till nothing more sprays from the briefcase.

The relief that washes over her causes her to gasp out for breath and she stumbles away from the case, for good measure, before dropping backwards into a row of seats. Tears stream from her face as she realizes she's survived this. She didn't have to die and the world is saved. Laughter leaves her lips as she rests her head back against the window of the car, still with tears rolling down her cheeks.

A faint knock on the window breaks Lissa's attention away from her moment of pure happiness and relief. She turns her head finding Billy standing there, a smile on his face. He puts his open hand against the window pane and she does the same, matching hers to his. "We're going to be okay." She promises him.

Its forty-eight hours later when Lissa knows she can fully found the promise true. Shortly after destroying the Spanish flu briefcase, the CDC arrived in full force. The area was quarantined off by the CDC all geared up in hazmat suits. She was brought from the subway car to a mobile decontamination unit where he skin was scrubbed near raw in hot water by a woman in a CDC suit. Her clothes were bagged to be burned along with anything else on her. Following the scrub down she was given a pair of hospital scrubs to put on then transported in a contamination vehicle to the CDC's main office in Atlanta.

There she was tested every hour for any signs of the flu while held in a small completely sterile hospital room. The only people she saw were those from the CDC all in their hazmat suits. The hours ticked by painfully slow and she found herself in a state somewhere between awake and asleep. Lissa felt as though she was just falling asleep when an African American man dressed in a dress shirt, pants and a doctors coat nudges her awake. It's the first time the subway platform that she saw someone that wasn't wearing a hazmat suit.

"Miss. Andrews." The man greets and it seems like ages ago Lissa was given the fake FBI agent identity of Tessa Andrews by Church. "You're outside the incubation period for the flu. You are not infected and therefore free to go." The man tells her. Lissa can only assume he's the new director for the CDC. He holds out a plain black sweatshirt and sweatpants to her, "I hope these are to your liking."

"Does my family know?" Lissa asks him.

"They do." The man tells her, "They are waiting outside the gates to the building for you. My assistant, Claire, is just outside the door to your room. She'll escort you out of the building. You did a very brave thing Miss. Andrews, you did your country proud." He then heads for the door, giving Lissa privacy to change.

"Thank you sir." Lissa tells him.

The man then turns and looks at her, "If you don't mind me asking Miss. Andrews, who are you?" The man asks, "I've had a man named Mr. Church breathing down my neck since we brought you in about your status. The lack of a full name leads me to believe CIA. Not to mention dangerous looking man after dangerous looking man showing up demanding to know your status. We even received some rather threatening phone calls from a number that traces back to a tattoo shop in New Orleans."

Lissa finds herself cracking a grin at the man's words. "I'm just a girl with plans to get married soon." Lissa tells him with a shrug, but keeping the smile on her face. Disappointed with her answer the man leaves the door, shutting the door behind him. Just before it shuts she hears him whisper "Must be a CIA agent," and she can only shake her head at how wrong he is.

After dressing in record time, Lissa leaves the sublevels of the CDC building with Claire the assistant. Lissa finds herself walking faster than Claire, a new found feeling of anxiousness making her want to get above ground and back with The Expendables. The elevator ride feels painfully slow, despite it only seconds to reach the ground floor. Once outside the building, Lissa finds herself gulping in breaths of fresh air. After forty eight hours locked in the room in the CDC breathing in air regulated through machines, the fresh air feels amazing.

"I feel the same way when I leave every day." Claire tells Lissa as she leads her down the short walk to a set of gates in front of the building. She waves to the security guard sitting in a small tower outside the gates and soon the open. "Good luck, with everything." Claire tells her.

Lissa steps out the open gates finding Barney and Billy standing there. "What no parade for the hero?" She asks them both with a laugh.

Barney actually jogs a few steps to her and wraps his arms around her. The tight hug lasts longer than she can recall Barney ever hugging her. And when he releases her, Billy's arms take their place.

"Never do that to me again, never you hear me?" Billy demands as he kisses her forehead, keeping her pulled close to him.

"Promise." Lissa promises him. "Now, I just want to go home. To our home."

Billy smiles and pulls something from the pocket of his shirt then holds it out into her line of vision, "This should help." He says. Dangling from his hand is her compass necklace. She's so glad now that she threw it at Fairview. If it had been on her when the CDC arrived it would have been burned to avoid any chance of the Spanish flu spreading. He steps behind her, hooking the necklace around her neck.

Lissa instantly grasps ahold of the compass, finding comfort in the familiar piece of metal being back where it belongs. "Home it is then." She tells them, but she doesn't need to look at the compass for the coordinates, she knows them by heart.

"Plane's just next door." Barney tells her, "Church pulled some strings."


	23. Chapter 23: The Wedding (Finally!)

"Sniper." Maggie lists off as she leans against the bed in Lissa and Billy's bedroom.

"Duck and a fog grenade is tucked into both Remy and Colt's vests." Lissa answers as she pats Remy, who is asleep on the bed. A black vest sticks out against her white and grey fur.

"Suspicious person?"

Lissa grabs a small handgun off the bed, "Knee shot first, ask questions later." She answers.

"Zombie?"

"Aim for the head of course." Lissa laughs out her answer but then reaches into her nightstand drawer, pulling out a collapsible metal baton, "Noise captures their attention." She then secures the baton into a holder in Remy's vest.

Maggie smiles, "I think we've covered everything." She straightens standing up and then walks so she's standing in front of Lissa. "You look beautiful." She smiles.

Before Lissa can answer there's two short knocks on the door before it opens, "Miss. Hollis, we're ready for you." A man with a buzz cut wearing a basic suit and tie says.

"I'll see you down there." Maggie says giving Lissa's hand a quick squeeze before leaving the room.

"Come on Remy." Lissa calls, which wakes Remy from her slumber. Remy jumps down from the bed, eyeing the man in the suit before heading for the stairs. Lissa heads out of the room with the man in the suit following behind her.

A few paces ahead, another man in a suit this one with a full head of hair brings the collar of his left sleeve to his mouth, "The Compass is on the move." He says and then descends the staircase ahead of Lissa.

Just as Lissa gets to the landing of the stairs, she catches her reflection in the antique mirror hanging on the wall opposite the staircase. The knee length white gown is simple sleeve bodice top with a thin grey belt coming across just below where her compass necklace rests. Her black hair hangs in loose curls with a silver hand band, which matches the dress belt. Clutched in her hand is a bouquet of marigolds. All of it is simple and relaxed like Lissa Hollis.

"Thank you for helping make today possible." Lissa tells both men in the suits as she descends the stairs.

"It's the least we could do for you Miss. Hollis. The President of The United States is in debt to you for your selfless action." The full headed man in the suit says with a nod. Apparently saving the world comes with a personal thank you from the president. Of course considering the whole event with Fairview was covered up as a gas leak not an act of terrorism; Lissa wasn't getting thank you's from the millions of people she saved. Not that she minded, it's one less thing to worry about. As a thank you from the president a mixture of current, former and soon-to-be Secret Service agents were sent to ensure the completion of the Hollis-Timmons wedding.

"There's my girl." Barney says with a smile as he spots her, "Ready for this?"

"Ready." Lissa answers with a smile, the two head, with the Secret Service agents in tow, to the back door leading out to Billy and Lissa's backyard. Out there a white tent has been put up with tables, chairs, buffet lines and a dance floor all set up. To the right is two small clusters of chairs on either side of a long and thin white carpet.

"The Compass is arriving." The buzz cut Secret Service agent says into his sleeve and with that the traditional wedding march begins to play. The people sitting in the cluster of chairs all rise and turn in their direction.

Lissa can't help but smile as Barney links one arm with hers and begins the walk down the aisle. "This is really happening." She whispers to him. "No signs of kidnappers."

"The six best sniper nests I'd choose are filled. No one is getting in here. I wouldn't be surprised if Church has satellites trained on the place ready to fire laser beams at a raccoon that gets too close." Barney whispers back.

As they make it past the cluster of chairs, Lissa spots all of the familiar faces of The Expendables, Church, Maggie and Tool as well. Even Booker and Trench are present; apparently they were two of the dangerous men who stormed the CDC demanding to know her status. Booker taps a shotgun resting against the chair in front of her and gives her a wink, which only causes her to smile more.

She brings her gaze from Booker to right ahead where Billy stands in a simple white polo shirt and black dress pants. The hundred watt smile on his face matches her own and even from just a few feet away she can make out the shape of his favorite pair of sunglasses, the ones she gave him, in his pocket. Remy and Colt sit on either side of him, watching the scene unfold. Behind Billy stands Lee Christmas dressed in a grey polo and black dress pants, a small book clutched in his hand.

"Who gives this woman to this man?" Lee asks looking to Barney.

"I do." Barney answers and then kisses Lissa's forward before leaving her side to go sit next to Maggie in the front row. Lissa moves to stand across from Billy and takes one of his hands in hers.

"Please be seated." Lee says and the group follows his request, "We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Billy Timmons and Alyssa Hollis. Before I continue the ceremony I must ask, and please let me finish in full, does anyone object to this union? Please stand because it'll make it easier for me to shoot you on sight." Lee then looks around the room with a smirk, "I'm talking Russian mobsters, crazy scientists, rogue CIA agents, hell why not even throw Mexican cartel and crazy cult groups out there? No one, good. Now…."

And with that Lissa Hollis married Billy Timmons in the backyard of their home in the presence of their closest friends. It wasn't the fairytale wedding they had planned but this one fits them much better. It was simple and a celebration with all the people they loved present. After fighting for both of their lives, and the lives of millions of others, having something just for them is appealing. The wedding ceremony moved straight onto the reception where the medium sized group dined on ribs and grilled kitchen with plenty of corn on the cob and mashed potatoes to go around. Southern comfort food just fit perfect in the wedding reception for two who grew to call the south their home.

"Sorry to interrupt." Tool says as he walks over to Billy and Lissa's table, Barney is there talking with them both, "Barney, there's a job."

"What kind of job?" Lissa asks right away.

"One you're not taking." Barney tells her, "You two are going to be a normal married couple who go on their honeymoon, not a mission. What is it Tool?"

"A United States senator's son was kidnapped while building homes for a charity group in the Philippines." Tool answers, "The group is known for demanding ransom but delivering a dead body. They need you to get him out." He then looks to Lissa and Billy, a sad look on his face, "Unfortunately, time is of the essence."

"Philippines stealth means going in airborne." Billy says to Lissa.

Lissa can't help but grin, "We did get those new parachutes and well Hawaii is on the way back from the Philippines."

"We're in." Billy says to Tool and Barney, "After everything, we take the whole kidnapping personal."

Barney only shakes his head, knowing he's not going to win the you're-not-coming-battle. "Alright." He says and then walks off to assemble the team. While they were celebrating Billy and Lissa's engagement he thought to himself that Billy and Lissa are the perfect people to lead the second generation of The Expendables. Seeing the two of them now, laughing as they swipe icing off the remaining pieces of cake while discussing the pros and cons of landing directly on land in the Philippines or going in by boat, he knows that still holds true. If they two of them can get through being kidnapped, near-blinded, and nearly getting the Spanish flu, they'll make it throw anything thrown their way long after he and the first generation are gone.

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**Authors Note: So this is the end everyone. When I wrote What We Become I hadn't planned to do this sequel, but you all motivated me to. For now I'm out of ideas for what could happen next for Lissa, Billy and the rest of The Expendables. To all of you loyal readers and commenters, thank you for your kind words and support. It truly has meant a lot. If you have ideas of what you'd like to see happen if there ever is a third part let me know. It was the comments looking for a wedding that put the first chapter in my head, so maybe one of you will light a spark for a third part. I do have a few ideas for other stories that are non-Expendables. So feel free to check out my page in the coming weeks for new stories. Once again, thank you all! You've made writing Lissa's story a blast!**


	24. Chapter 24: Part 3 - Preview

**Authors Note: Below is a preview of the first chapter of the third part of Lissa's story, entitled "The Home Team".**

**I'd like to send a special thanks out to those loyal readers from when I first posted the story. I never imagined Lissa's story would have a second or a third part. I'd also like to thank those new readers, your kind words mean so much to me. There wouldn't be a third part without you new and older readers!**

* * *

A bruised Lissa Hollis with a half-moon black eye strolls down the street leading to the Downtown New Orleans Police Station. Weeks ago it stopped being an actual police station. It was once a place associated with safety, now only fear.

"Remember the plan Liss." Billy says to her through the com in her ear. She knows he doesn't like her walking into that station, not after how she came out.

A gust of wind sends her dyed black hair flying around her face and pulls at her black knee-length trench coat, causing her to pull it tighter with her hands. "All in position?" She asks.

"We're good." Billy answers.

"Be safe, love you." Lissa tells him.

"Love you too." Billy repeats.

With that Lissa pushes open one of the glass doors to the station. She takes a second to watch all of the occupants bussing around about their business. Some drag prisoners dressed in the orange jumpsuits those in the containment camps wore to the back interrogation rooms. The thought of those rooms makes goose bumps form on her arms. She pushes away the unpleasant memories before they can begin to flash before her eyes. She has a mission to complete.

Lissa takes in a breath and walks to the front desk with her head held high. She doesn't have a single fear, even though she's walking into enemy territory. The solider at the front desk looks at her, a slight look of recognition flashes on his face. She knows he's trying to place how he knows her. "Hi, how are you?" She asks him and unbuttons the few buttons of her trench coat, keeping it closed with one hand till they all are undone. "You're gonna' want to page your bosses." She then lets the trench drop from her shoulders and to the floor.

That's when it's revealed Lissa Hollis is standing in the middle enemy territory with a bomb strapped to her chest. It's the very reason why she has no fear. She grabs a gun from her thigh holster and fires a shot up into the ceiling. "Everybody listen up!" She shouts and holsters the weapon, "This vest is a very unique bomb. There are multiple fail safes, including it being hooked up to a heart rate sensor. My heart stops, it blows. My team is listening as well, they hear a shot, this vest blows. So nobody try to be a hero, that'll just end messy."


End file.
